Setting Things Right
by Anime-Ronin
Summary: COMPLETEThere are some things that cannot be abided by in the grand scheme of things and in those instances a person is selected to go back and to set them right. Naturally, in this case, it is one Alexander Harris who is chosen to do so.
1. Changes Made, Destinies Are Changed

Setting Things Right by Anime Ronin  
  
Summary: There are some things that cannot be abided by in the grand scheme of things and in those instances a person is selected to go back and to set them right. Naturally, in this case, it is one Alexander Harris who is chosen to do so.  
  
Disclaimer: I own nothing, so deal with it.  
  
Author's Notes: I didn't watch S7, so don't bite my head off; I think that things could have gone better in the early going if a certain Vampire Layer (and no, I did not miss-spell that) had done their job the first time around, so I'm changing things a great deal. More to the fact, I like the potential that Jenny had and, more so, that Xander has as the quiet hero / hard ass / assassin of demonic entities – my story, my rules.  
  
Xander looked around the particularly desolate landscape that he had no idea how he had come to – he'd been on his way out of Sunnydale after Graduation and was about ten miles outside of Oxnard when he started to feel woozy and pulled over for a second. He'd closed his eyes for a second after getting out of his car for some fresh air and when he opened them, the semi-desert that had surrounded him was gone, as was the omni-present heat and buckets of sweat he had been sweating; now it was like he was standing alone with his car in the middle of a computer realm, all flat and oddly-three-dimensional, while there was no heat, no wind, hell, not even a sun or sky overhead, just ... nothing.  
  
"Okay, this is a new level of weird, even for me," he muttered to himself while removing his sweat-drenched Hawaiian shirt to reveal a white t-shirt over his khaki pants and sneaker. "Where the hell am I?"  
  
"The Astral Plain," a voice from directly behind him stated in a firm voice that sounded oddly like James Earl Jones.  
  
Xander yelped, jumped and spun around in the space of a heartbeat and landed in an offensive combat stance that came instinctually with his past Soldier possession while eyeing the person in front of him. The guy was tall, maybe six and a half feet, and solidly built with muscles that seemed to ooze power from under the crisp Navy business suit that he wore with authority and ease; his brown hair was cropped to nearly Mil Spec length, his eyes were an icy blue and his face, while on the border of handsome and beautiful, held a hard resolve that startled him. "Who the hell are you?"  
  
"You may call me ... Lex, young man. We have brought you here to explain something to you and to then send you on your way."  
  
"And whom, precisely, are 'we', kemosabe? Ya got a mouse in your pocket that you wanna let out?" Xander tried to cover his innate fear of this being with his terminal smart mouth, but felt that it would do little more than serve the being's purpose.  
  
"Your kind call us The Powers That Be, child." Xander felt his stomach clench into a ball of acid and drop to the soles of his feet while he felt his face go pasty white as the being continued, "Now, before we begin, do you wish to hear the good news or the bad news?"  
  
"Ah, hell," Xander groaned, really hating it when conversations started like that. "Gimme the bad news first, Lex."  
  
"You're going back to high school." When Xander gave him no lip, Lex went on, "There were several things that came to pass in the previous timeline and, quite frankly, they do not bode well for your world, so we, The Powers That Be, are going to correct some of them."  
  
"Like what, and why only some?"  
  
"As to your second question, some of the things that happened in the past timeline are necessary, like Slayer Summers' and McPhearson's deaths, and the un-souling / re-souling of Angelus. Some things, like the death of Jenny Calendar, allowing William The Bloody to exist and Drusilla to leave town, and Slayer Williams' turning traitor to the side of Light just cannot be allowed to stand as they are."  
  
"And you want me to do exactly what about these things, Lex? In case you have not been paying attention lately, I'm the normal guy." Xander felt his stomach drop from the soles of his feet to the core of the Earth with those words – he really hated it when Cordy was right.  
  
"Yes you are, and no you are not, Xander." Lex reached into the inside pocket of his business suit jacket and removed first a vile of clear liquid and then a plain manila envelope, "First of all, drink this and then we can get started."  
  
Xander accepted both items and began to drink the liquid without even thinking, as if he was being controlled by an outside force, but seeing whom he was dealing with, it was altogether possible that he was being controlled by an outside force. Once the liquid was going along it's way into his digestive tract, Xander immediately dropped to his knees in agony as his body began to be changed at the genetic level – every sense he held became sharper by a factor of no less than five, his muscles hardened and his baby fat stores simply vanished as his mind began to accept a flood of new information. After a minute on the ground, he brought himself to his feet and shook himself off, snarling several vile oaths in Ancient Sumarian, something he had picked up while researching with Giles, before starting in a cold manner – his memories from Soldier Boy and the Hyena were now not so cloudy and part of his own mind, and everything suddenly made sense.  
  
"Yes, it should make sense, Xander," Lex went on with a smug grin on his face. "I have merged the two spirits within you and granted you some of the Hyena's abilities to facilitate you with your mission, as you have no doubt figured out. Please follow me." Lex walked away from Xander and, on instinct, Xander followed the being in hopes of getting some actual answers.  
  
"Alright, now here is the situation in brass tacks – I have been watching the events of the past three years and, quite frankly, feel as if you have been given the short end of the stick nine times out of ten, as have several others within your group. I, and several others, do not like where this timeline is going and, as such, we are going to send you back to the beginning of where things began to go wrong to allow you to change the events I dictated earlier; now, there are several possible outcomes to these changes and all of them are infinitely better than the road your timeline was on, hence what we are doing."  
  
"Alright, I get that you don't want us to get whatever shaft we were going to get, but you never answered my other question – why me?"  
  
"Because of the fact that you have no real destiny other than to be a wild card, as it were, and you have the uncanny ability to be a cold-hearted son of a bitch when decisions need to be made and actions taken, like when the Hellmouth was going to be blown open and your actions to stop it, not to mention your withholding information from Slayer Summers when she was going to fight Angelus for the last time – we like that and that is why you have been chosen." Lex stopped walking and turned to Xander, "Xander, I have faith in your abilities to do what is necessary, even if it does twist your guts to do so. Inside of that envelope you shall find a cell phone, a wallet, some papers and several other sealed envelopes with names written on them – do not, under any circumstances, open those on pains of death." Lex's tone was absolutely serious and Xander knew he was going to follow those orders to the letter, "Now, the phone is my link to you – I am the only one who can speak to you over it, so if it goes off, answer the damned thing. I will give you instructions on what to do and where to be for events that absolutely must be changed, events that much not be changed and things that are up in the air – they may be good, they may be bad, but all things being equal, let your gut tell you what to do in those situations.  
  
"The wallet holds your identification, permits and other odds and ends, as any good wallet should, but know that you can never lose it – it will always be in your left hip pocket if your clothes allow it to be so. I've taken the liberty to give you a concealed firearms permit and carry permit so that you may have a firearm if necessary." Lex looked over at Xander, who had a solid, focused look on his face, "Do you understand everything so far?"  
  
"Yes, but what about the whole 'bullets don't kill vampires' thing?"  
  
Lex smiled an enigmatic smile, "I'm sure you'll be able to come up with something, Xander. Now, another thing within your envelope is the deed and keys to a new domicile near the University – for some living at home is a necessary evil, but you and I both know you are better off out of that hellhole, no pun intended. It's a modest place with several perks, but you are responsible for up keep and anything you wish to add, meaning all utilities and taxes paid."  
  
"Cool," Xander uttered in a credible 'Oz' impression.  
  
"Very," Lex supplied with a chuckle. "One last thing – I am going to place you back in your time on the night of Halloween in 1997; you will still be a soldier and the spell will still happen, but you must ... take care of ... several people in that time frame. Do not worry about your friends," Lex went on quickly, "for they will be taken care of. Your primary mission is to eliminate William The Bloody as he leaves his crypt with Drusilla, but do not eliminate her just yet, we need her to kill Slayer McPhearson."  
  
Xander stayed quiet at that, knowing he would not like having to bury Kendra again – she'd just started to come out of her shell when she was killed, and had things been different, he thought they could have been good friends ... maybe more.  
  
"Your secondary mission is to, upon completion of your primary mission, to eliminate Ethan Rayne in his place of business and stop the spell by breaking the bust of Janus by any means necessary. Your only optional mission, should you choose to accept it, is to break into the Sunnydale Armory and ... liberate ... whatever you need or may need."  
  
"I swear that if you start humming the 'Mission: Impossible' theme I'll find a way to shoot you," Xander growled and Lex smirked.  
  
"Excellent. Now, on your way, Xander, and be careful." Lex raised his right hand and snapped his fingers, which then emitted a bright white light/flash and made Xander blink in order to not be blinded.  
  
When he opened his eyes, he was on the porch of Buffy's house in his soldier fatigues and with his toy gun in hand, the door opening to reveal the face of one Dawn Summers, his Dawn Patrol, dressed in a Sailor Scout uniform with a green fringe, boots and a thunder-bolt tiara. He first smiled at her in genuine happiness and then smirked as the outfit registered – following that smirk was a snort, and then a snicker in her direction, which was then countered by a Summers Death Glare, Version Dawn, in his direction that shut him up (AN: SDG: VD is a derivative of one that one of my good friends in high school used to give me on occasion. Thanks, Jenny.)  
  
"Not one word, Harris. You and I both know that Buffy somehow rigged the game to where I would lose the bet and, hence, here I am in a costume that she picked out." Her light green eyes flashed with a fire as her newly auburn hair cascaded down her back and she let him in, "That aside, looking good, G.I. Xander."  
  
Xander snapped to attention and then saluted, "Ma'am, Private Harris reporting for duty, Ma'am. Ready to go, willing to die, ma'am." At her perturbed look, he then smirked and caught her up in a huge hug, which she didn't seem to mind, "Aw, don't frown, Dawn Patrol; you and I both know that I'm too stubborn to die easy, let along die without taking a massive amount of real-estate with me in the process, which will in and of itself make me a legend for all time."  
  
"That's good to know, Xand," Buffy said from the stairway in her noblewoman's gown.  
  
"Lady Buffy, Duchess of Buffonia, were it not for your sister's glorious use of it, I would completely renounce spandex for you," Xander said while sinking to one knee, remembering what had happened last time. "Now, before Willow comes down here, I'm willing to bet she goes with her classic 'Casper' look."  
  
"One Large pizza, all the way?" Dawn piped in, a smile on her face at the prospect of getting said pizza.  
  
"For you, Dawnmeister, anything."  
  
"Deal." They shook on it as Willow descended the stairs in her sheet.  
  
"Sucker," Willow, who then pulled off her sheet to reveal street clothes, teased Dawn, who pouted. "Xander knows that I've done this bit for the past few years and would do it again."  
  
Dawn looked up at Xander, "So I owe you a pizza?"  
  
"Well, yes, but in lieu of that, I reserve the right to torture the first schmuck who thinks he can come here and try and date you in any way that I see fit." He put an arm around her shoulders and looked up at a wide-eyed Buffy, a snickering Willow and then over at a smiling Joyce, "After all," he gave a very Hyena-esque smirk, "for Dawn, only the very best will do."  
  
"Can't I just give you the pizza instead?" Dawn's plaintive whine got snickers from Buffy and Willow while it got a giggle from Joyce, who walked over and hugged Xander, who hugged her back with interest while inhaling her scent – she would forever be on his 'must protect' list, as were Dawn, Willow and Buffy.  
  
"Now Dawn, I think that having Xander look out for you in the future in regards to your possible dates is a wonderful idea – he can give them the first through tenth degrees and get away with it where I could not." Joyce did not try and extricate herself from his hug, knowing that he didn't get enough hugs at home.  
  
"And if he is the one I want to date?" Dawn's question brought everyone up short and made Xander's heart rate jump about three hundred percent. Dawn would be a beautiful woman one day, but he'd rather kill himself than to possibly hurt her.  
  
"He's too old for you, Dawn," Buffy sputtered out as Willow's face went as red as her hair.  
  
Dawn scowled and fired back a return volley, "I can trump your claim with one word – Angel."  
  
Xander looked at Joyce, who was torn between laughing and scolding the pair, "Joyce, I swear to you upon my life, my soul and my comic book collection that, once she is eighteen or older, if we were to ever date, that if I hurt her you may kill me in any fashion that you see fit."  
  
Joyce looked at him in her 'mother' look and then pointed a finger into his chest; "I will hold you to that, Xander."  
  
He looked into her eyes and said, "I hope so. Anyone who wants Dawn first has to go through me, then Willow, and then Buffy, then Giles, and then you, as a last line of defense – but seeing as they won't make it past me, the point is moot."  
  
"Well said, Xander," Joyce patted his cheek and then moved to open the door. "Now, don't you have somewhere you have to be, children?"  
  
"Later, mom," Buffy said, grabbing Xander as she went by and dragging him out of the house, Dawn and Willow hot on their heels.  
  
++++++++++  
  
Xander stumbled slightly as the spell to change their costumes into reality hit him, but then stood upright as said spell just slipped off of him and went to his weapon, turning it into a real M-16A2 5.56mm with seven thirty- round magazines loaded for bear in the gun and on his waist, but he instantly knew that it might not be enough, so while taking off to achieve his first objective, namely dusting Spike as he came out of his lair, he started to think of how he was going to get into the Sunnydale Armory to procure some more ordinance and just what he was going or procure while there.  
  
"Focus, Harris, focus." He muttered to himself, racking the action to chamber a round before slipping off into the back woods and away from the total carnage that was becoming the scene behind him with numerous pirates and mini-demons running amok and causing unholy terror amongst the normal citizens of Sunnydale. Raking through his memory of former hideouts of Spike and Dru, he soon came to the first one, an old crypt near Hillside Cemetery, which just happened to be a few minutes away from the 'downtown' district of Sunnydale, and was brought up short when one of the crypt doors was suddenly flung open to reveal the Billy Idol-wannabe himself, William 'The Bloody'. He was dressed in his long duster and wincing as Dru screamed from behind him somewhere, not really paying attention while Xander flipped the action from three-round burst to semi-automatic and drew a bead on Spike's chest, remembering how well his bullets worked the last time around.  
  
"Spiky, please don't go outside, luv! My Kitten has claws and is about to nibble at your ankles, he is." Xander saw Spike flinch slightly and look back as if to yell at Dru about something, which was all of the chance he needed to squeeze the trigger.  
  
With a sharp crack and a 'cling' that the action mechanism had used the gas expended to work the bolt back to eject the spent brass casing and allow it to snap back forwards, picking up a new round from the magazine and ramming it home. All of this took less than a half of a second as Xander saw the round strike home into Spike's chest, picking the wiry Master Vampire up slightly, spinning him around about a quarter of a turn and them making him turn to dust before he began to succumb to the effects of gravity.  
  
With no sound at all, save for the reverberation of the shot from the surrounding crypts and Dru's piercing shriek, Xander took off at a quick clip, muttering an old saying from Soldier Boy's memories, "One shot, one kill." He knew for a fact that if Dru caught him before he was able to complete his secondary objective that he would be in for a very long next few days, maybe weeks before she got around to killing him.  
  
Running through the backwoods and occasionally taking shots at vampires, real ones, that were about to snack on helpless victims, Xander found himself in a bit of a quandary – Lex had told him that his friends would be safe, but knowing what he did already know, he knew that he had a few minutes to get to Buffy, Willow and Cordy before everything pretty much went to hell in a hand basket for them. But if he took time to do that, then Giles would be alerted to the fact that Ethan Rayne was at fault for the chaos that was going down and he would not be able to complete his secondary objective, one that he knew he must take care of in order to appease Lex and the others, whom he owed for being able to do what was necessary in order to set things right.  
  
Steeling his nerves, he ran right past where Buffy was screaming as a car went past, "A Demon!" which brought a slight smirk to his lips even as Willow answered, "That's not a demon, Buffy; that's a car." He knew that if Willow saw or even heard him as he went by he'd be called down and forced to help them, despite the fact that he had a job to do and one that could not wait.  
  
"JUPITER THUNDER DRAGON!" The heavens opened up and struck down a trio of near-by demons that were approaching Dawn in her Sailor Jupiter outfit, but did not seem to slow them down in the slightest as they approached her.  
  
Xander, remembering all of the good times he had previously had with his Dawn Patrol and would continue to have with his Dawn Patrol, proceeded to see the world in various shades of red as his finger flipped the selector switch from semi-auto to three-round burst even as the muzzle of his rifle came up to acquire the tango nearest to his Dawnie. The weapon let fly three rounds with a single pull of the trigger and he then shifted his aim to acquire tango 2 and tango 3 even as the first tango went down in a heap of demon mass as it's head was suddenly air-conditioned through and through; two tugs of the trigger later and the other two demons joined their friend in a journey back to hell as the action locked back on an empty mag.  
  
"Who are you and how did you do that?" Dawn/Sailor Jupiter demanded as she stalked towards him, even as he changed out his spent mag for a fresh one, "And you look just like my last boyfriend."  
  
"Name's Harris, Xander Harris, and I can't stay and chat, kiddo." Slapping the mag into place and working the action, he started to run off but felt a small hand grab a handful of his fatigue jacket, holding him in place even as he tried to get away.  
  
"Who are you calling 'kiddo'? I am Sailor Jupiter, and I WANT AN ANSWER!" Dawn's face flushed red with anger as she yanked him back even as he tried to leave.  
  
"Fine, here it is; you're not really Sailor Jupiter, just her mind and powers in the body of one Dawn Marie Summers, or haven't you noticed that your front is a little on the light side and you are also about a foot shorter than you should be?"  
  
These facts registered in Jupiter's mind and she let his jacket go, "What's going on?"  
  
"A spell, cast by a Chaos Mage in town whom is about to find out how bad of an idea it is to screw with this town, let alone with me in it." Xander looked down into Dawn's/Jupiter's green eyes and then forced himself not to get lost in them – if when she got older and asked him on a date, he would be hard-pressed to say no to her, ever, "Look, I know where this guy is and I need to stop this spell before everything goes to Hell, literally."  
  
He took off at a dead run, knowing that time was against him even as Dawn/Jupiter screamed for him to wait, but he couldn't so he didn't. The spell would end in a little over twenty minutes and that was after Giles had beat Rayne around for a little more than five, so he had about ten minutes to play with after running flat-out, even with Dawn/Jupiter running after him still screaming for him to stop, that his legs were longer than hers.  
  
++++++++++  
  
"Is that you, Ripper?"  
  
"No, it's not, Rayne; you'd be in a better position to bargain for your life if it was," Xander ground out as he entered the shop, weapon hot and bead drawn on Rayne's chest. "Tell me how to end the spell and I'll consider letting you live."  
  
"Ah, it's you, The Soldier. Yes, one of my best wo*ARGH!" Rayne went down in a crumpled heap as Xander shot him in the leg at a distance of about ten feet, the sound of the shot deafening in the small store, but he was past caring.  
  
"How do I end the spell, Rayne, this is the last time I ask without putting a bullet into a vital spot on your body."  
  
Ethan Rayne looked down at his right leg, about four inches above the knee, and as he placed his hands on the wound to staunch the flow of blood he hissed out, "You sodding bastard, you shot me!"  
  
"No shit, Sherlock, and I'll shoot you again and in a more painful location if you don't tell me how to end the spell right the fuck now!" Xander drew a bead on Rayne's right shoulder and moved his sights over an inch or so to where he'd miss the major artery and nerve cluster – being shot there would hurt like a son of a bitch, but Rayne would probably survive ... probably, maybe.  
  
"What makes you think that I believe you, ya git? You're a White Hat, one of the Slayer's crew, and you won't shoot me again." Ethan ground out even as he tried to stand with the aid of the near-by counter.  
  
"Oh really? I won't shoot you again?" Xander put another round into Rayne's body, this time in the spot he picked out a second or so after his first shot, and Rayne went down in a screaming, bleeding mess, "I think I've just disproved your theory, Rayne, now tell me how to break the spell. This is your last chance before I start taking shots at vital organs like your heart, lungs, liver," Xander trailed the muzzle of his rifle down to Ethan's crotch, "or whatever else might be available."  
  
Ethan Rayne had been called many things in his life, most of them being true, but nobody had ever accused him of being stupid that Xander knew of – he wasn't sure what was in his eyes at that point, but Ethan's face went pasty white at whatever it was and stammered out for him to break the bust of Janus, which is what Lex had told Xander to do to begin with. Xander pivoted and put a single shot through the bust of the Roman god, which made it shatter into a thousand tiny shards of stone even as Xander spun back around and put a bullet into Rayne's heart from a distance of four feet as the spell faded and the gun turned back into a toy – Rule One of Combat is to never leave a living enemy on your six. Getting control of his stomach and working quickly to make it look like a robbery gone wrong, Xander cleaned out the register, roughed the place up and left out of the back door even as Giles started to poke around the front door for his confrontation with Rayne.  
  
Xander ran back to his new place, a nice condo near the University, just like Lex said, Xander began to calm down and run through his head, again, what must be done to finish the last part of his mission even as he counted the money he'd stolen from the store that held Rayne's corpse, coming up with a grand total of $2,300 in small bills (twenties and under) and over $3,000 in larger bills (Grants and Franklins) as he entered the domicile that was his after checking the packet that had been riding in his back pocket with his wallet the entire way. It was about this time that he noticed that his hands were starting to shake rather violently as the full scope of what he had done hit him like a Mack truck – yes, he had killed a person in cold blood, but later, when he was in a better frame of mind, he would ask himself the morality of stopping a threat before they had a chance to do more unspeakable crime.  
  
Xander jumped when his new cell phone went off in his pocket, scattering money around like a small blizzard before grabbing the phone and opening it, "Hello?"  
  
"Good work, Alexander," Lex's voice came through the phone, "and be advised that Rayne is getting exactly what he deserves for his crimes. Are you ready to make a run on the Armory?"  
  
"Yeah, I'm about to leave for it, sir." Xander scooped up the money and stuffed it into one of the numerous pots around the place, "Nice place, by the way."  
  
"Thank you, but it wasn't my call on it – apparently all males, mortal or otherwise, have bad tastes in places of residence," Lex explained, "so one of the female Powers took it upon herself to choose your place."  
  
"Tell her thanks, Lex. Sorry, but I gotta go – shift change is in twenty mikes and I need to get there PDQ. Out." Lex terminated the call as Xander shut his phone, making a mental list of what he would need for a decent armory within his home as he opened the door and left again, hoping not to get caught at the Armory.  
  
That is the end of Part One of Setting Things Right; please R & R but know that all flames will be used to toast marshmallows and cook my hotdogs. Thanks, AR. 


	2. Just Because It Had To Be Done Doesn't M...

Setting Things Right by Anime Ronin  
  
Summary: There are some things that cannot be abided by in the grand scheme of things and in those instances a person is selected to go back and to set them right. Naturally, in this case, it is one Alexander Harris who is chosen to do so.  
  
Disclaimer: I own nothing, so deal with it.  
  
Author's Notes: I didn't watch S7, so don't bite my head off; I think that things could have gone better in the early going if a certain Vampire Layer (and no, I did not miss-spell that) had done their job the first time around, so I'm changing things a great deal. More to the fact, I like the potential that Jenny had and, more so, that Xander has as the quiet hero / hard ass / assassin of demonic entities – my story, my rules.  
  
AN2: Okay, to answer some of the reviews that I have gotten, and man, there are a nice amount that keeps my muse happy: First off, sorry C/X-ers, not this time around because of whom I have planned for X in the somewhat-near future. Secondly, as to how his bullets killed the demons, well, I'm following the episode (I think), and I'm not sure how that really happened – don't worry, he'll come up with some cool demon killers later. Third, yes, they were real demons that were attacking Dawn, no, I won't explain just yet how he knew they were real demons and not kids caught up in the spell, and yes, he will feel responsible for Ethan's death but deal with it/explain it/justify it in the next chapter. Fourth, Xander's missions from TPTB won't always be what most people would consider good – regardless of that fact, there are certain things in their world that MUST happen, and sometimes sacrifices must be made in order for what is good for the majority to happen; sorry, but that is the way I see it. Buffy will tear into him about this once or twice about these decisions but will be surprisingly told to shut up by a few surprising sources (they can see how much these decisions are starting to get to Xander and take his side of things). Fifth, I know this chapter went quick, but later on I'll probably re-write it to add in more than a few things (explanations mostly) and I'll take things at a slower pace for chapters to come – oh and if I get something out of order as far as episodes go, TELL me, but don't flame. Sixth: To JWolf – I see Xander's merging with the Hyena and Soldier as more of a Balance – if you've taken any Psychology, you'd remember about ID, EGO and SUPEREGO, or in this case, HYENA, SOLDER, and XANDER, who is the balance of the two spirits. Granted, before hand he was more like a 'take it as it comes but then change it', or more towards the Hyena side, but now with Soldier in the mix, he'll be more centered, a blend of the two spirits but less goofy (except where Dawn is involved and when annoying Giles – a leopard can't change all of it's spots, or in this case, a hyena). Sadly, for Faith to show up, and she will, Kendra will have to die and regardless how both I and Xander feel about this, his new bosses need for this to happen, so it will ... but not without some SERIOUS retribution and maybe a touching grave-side scene while decked out in his hardware on his way for said retribution. Joyce will not change much save for learning about demons and such – and if I take this story into the later seasons SHE WILL NOT DIE FROM THAT TUMOR OR ANEURYSM AFTERWORDS. Sorry, had to vent there. Finally, the whole Dawn's costume bit was inspired by a picture next to my computer of a friend of mine from high school when we had a costume party – Jenny (yes, the originator of the SDG: VD) went as Sailor Jupiter and that is that is that).  
  
AN3: A note to all Spuffy and Spike-centric people out there – please, I liked Spike before the whole S6 fiasco, so let us remember him as the Big Bad he was rather than the raping, nutless wonder that he became. I would rather shoot a rapist rather than to give them a trial, but that would be a waste of a perfectly good bullet that could be used on someone more deserving, like a murderer.  
  
Okay, venting over and on with the Fic!  
  
Chapter 2 -- Just Because It Had To Be Done Doesn't Mean I'm Cool With It  
  
Xander found himself in his new condo the next morning, still dressed in his fatigues after having made a quick, but successful, run to the Sunnydale Armory, sitting in an over-stuffed chair and watching the sun rise over the cityscape. It was for moments like this that he liked to hunt Vampires, but more importantly, he was watching the sunrise because he could not get to sleep the previous night – last time around it was because of the Soldier's memories, which would have best been called a mixture of Glory, Platoon, a healthy dose of Saving Private Ryan, which he had seen just before Graduation, and Full Metal Jacket all stuck in a blender, liquefied and then condensed for his viewing pleasure – but this time it was the fact that he had been forced to kill Ethan Rayne the night before to keep him from pulling a stunt like that ever again. Sure, on paper an in his own mind Xander could see the rationality of it all, but it wasn't his mind or the paper that was keeping him up, it was his memory – the smell of the cordite, the crack of the bullet as it sped through the air, the color of and spray of the blood as the fatal bullet hit, the STENCH of the blood, the solid thud that only a dead body hitting the floor could make, all of those things kept replaying through his mind.  
  
The sun made it's presence known with a blinding ray of light cresting the cityscape that was Sunnydale and Xander forced himself out of his chair, removing his clothes to hop into the shower. Even as he walked past the mirror in the bathroom a few minutes later, he caught a glimpse of his own face and wasn't surprised at the haunted look in his eyes – he'd seen it before on numerous occasions and would, no doubt, see it again before his new job was over. Shaking himself slightly, he crawled into the shower, turned the water on as hot as he could stand it and stood in the spray, hoping against all hope that he could wash away some of the guilt and figurative blood on his hands even as he washed.  
  
+++  
  
Xander walked into the Library dressed in a rather subdued combination of dark jeans, a pair of black sneakers, a dark t-shirt underneath a jacket he had found in his new place's closet (as were most of his clothes – he had yet to find any of his favorite Hawaiian shirts) and walked over to where both Buffy and Willow were excitedly telling Giles about what they remembered and what happened to them while they had been under the influence of the spell the previous night. Buffy looked slightly sheepish was Willow brought up the whole car/demon bit but then looked over as he set his books down on the table, smiling as she did – Xander automatically smiled back but from the look on her face, he could tell that she could tell that something was wrong, but was going to let it slide for the time being.  
  
Willow finished her story and then turned and pinned Xander with her look / glare that immediately told Xander that a) he was in trouble and b) she wanted answers, "And you, Mister, where were you last night when all of this was gong on? We were supposed to be watching the kids and you disappeared and I had to deal with Lady Buffy all night by myself and ... what's wrong, Xander?" [Sorry, my Willow-babble is not up to date]  
  
"Yes, Xander, you look, quite frankly, like death warmed over," Giles put in somewhat helpfully as Xander tried to think up of a story on the fly, but decided to go with what had once been the truth.  
  
"Didn't sleep at all last night, guys. I'm not sure, but I think those fatigues I had on were used and whoever once used them saw some heavy combat back in Vietnam." He took a breath and let it out slowly, "Every time I closed my eyes last night, I kept hearing gunfire, explosions, people shouting and," he paused, trying to get control of his stomach, "I remember everything this guy did, saw, smelled, heard and it's making me sick." Okay, so much for only part of the truth.  
  
Willow, true to form, gasped and seemed to teleport across the table and began to try and crush the air out of him while Buffy looked stricken and Giles looked as if someone had just killed the Queen mum; after a few minutes of fighting off an overly-attached Willow, a well-intentioned Buffy and several questions from Giles, Xander screwed up the courage and looked over at Giles, "G-Man, let me ask you a serious question – if while under that spell, somebody did something rather illegal, could or should they be held accountable for what the spirit in charge did?"  
  
"First of all, don't call me that, and secondly would I be correct to assume that this has something to do with what I found in Ethan Rayne's shop when I went to break the spell?" Both Buffy and Willow looked somewhat lost at what was going on, but Xander ignored them and focused on Giles, who looked somewhat sick now.  
  
"I remember what happened, even I couldn't stop him – Giles, you gotta believe me when I tell you that he just wanted to break the spell, honest. Rayne wouldn't and the Soldier ... persuaded him to talk and got bullshit answers, several of them."  
  
"Xander, I saw the body. Ethan was an insufferable prat when it came to admitting that he was to be held accountable for his actions, but if what you say is true, I am not sure that you or this Soldier could be rightfully held accountable for his death." Both Willow and Buffy gasped, but both men ignored them, "Now what exactly do you remember about the incident."  
  
Xander took a breath and let it out slowly, the memories of what happened coming up tot he surface of his mind, "Soldier ordered Rayne to break the spell, Rayne refused, and Soldier put a bullet into his right femur four inches above the knee. Rayne refused to answer again and Soldier put another round in the right shoulder, near the collar bone, and then told Rayne that the next shot would be, quote, in the heart, lungs, liver, or whatever was available while point the gun at Rayne's crotch." Giles winces sympathetically as the girls gasped – Willow turned beet red and Buffy turned a pasty white, "Rayne told him, Soldier put a bullet into the bust of Janus, spun and shot Rayne ... and that's all I remember. Next thing I know I'm watching the sun rise in a condo near the University and there's a note saying the place is mine." Xander felt lower than a snake's belly for lying to them right to their faces, but none of them were mentally capable of dealing with what he was doing or what he had done  
  
Buffy was the first to regain the power of speech between her and Willow and her face twisted into a look of revulsion, "You KILLED him? How could you, he had a soul!"  
  
Xander barked out a sharp laugh that held no amusement whatsoever, "Buffy, don't try and sell me that shit, okay? A soul doesn't preclude being able to do evil – if you want proof why don't you ask Willow about her grandparents and those nifty little tattoos on the insides of their left arms. Besides, I didn't kill Ethan, the Soldier did, and rightfully so now that I think about it – he caused that chaos last night, got a lot of people killed in case you hadn't seen the paper this morning, so whatever the Soldier did to him, he probably deserved worse."  
  
Buffy looked over at Willow, who's face had gone pale at he mention of her grandparents and the tattoos, and then looked back at Xander, "How can you say that? Okay, I'll admit that Hitler was evil, but just because-" Buffy started to rant, but Xander cut her off.  
  
"The Federal Building in Oklahoma City, Jeffery Dhamer, Charlie Manson, Ten Bundy, The Spanish Inquisition, The Salem Witch Trials, do any of these starting to sound familiar, Slayer?" Xander stood up knowing what he was about to say was a gamble, but a necessary one, "Or how about we get to Angel? I've read a few of Giles' Watcher Chronicles and do you want to know what they said about him? Trust me, Buffy, he was no Saint; he earned a title that not even Hitler earned, but I'll leave it to Giles to tell you about that. So bye, I've got class to get to." Xander grabbed his book bag and made for the door, listening to Giles cleaning his glasses, and then went through them, almost running over Ms. Calendar in the process, "Sorry, Ms. Calendar."  
  
"See me after school today, Alexander." Her voice brooked no argument, "We have something to discuss and I assure you that it may not be good news for a certain Vampire you and I know of." She then smiled sweetly at him, patted his cheek and went into the Library where a small war had started between Giles and Buffy over just whom Angel used to be – and this war was rapidly escalating into an all-out character assassination of a certain bottle-blonde Slayer.  
  
Xander watched as she left, rubbing his cheek where she had patted him and smiled, remembering just how beautiful Jenny Calendar had been and then wiped the smile off of his face at the memory of just how she had died and how very little had been done to avenge that death. "Not this time, and never again."  
  
+++  
  
Throughout the day, Xander worked on something that had been nagging at him ever since the spell had been broken the night before – how in the hell would normal bullets kill vampires and demons? Sure, he figured that a tracer round, seeing it was essentially a tiny flare, would work in a pistol or a SMG, maybe even an assault rifle, but those were not cheap and sometimes you needed a bit more substance to carry through the thicker skins of certain demons.  
  
The previous night at the Armory he had procured a MK23 MOD0 USSOCOM with a suppressor, tactical holster and ten magazines of .45-caliber ammunition, a tactical Kevlar vest, some flash-bang grenades, a suppressed UMP chambered for .45 cal and ten magazines to go with it, but he needed something a little more long-range in case he needed to snipe at somebody, not to mention if the Judge showed up, so that meant either a LAAW or an AT-4, both of which would be a royal pain in the ass to sneak off with. Still, it was a good start with what he had gotten the night before and it would hold him for a while. As far as ammo went, he had the idea of getting a priest to bless the ammunition, but then that would start to raise a few questions after a while.  
  
All thoughts turned to the situation at hand as Xander opened the door to Ms. Calendar's classroom about ten minutes after the final bell rang; he had been avoiding both Buffy and Willow all day and, quite frankly, neither of them were worth the diversion, cloak and dagger bullshit. The caller of the meeting sat behind her desk, absently grading several papers as she looked up and Xander forced his heart to stay down where it was supposed to be and his blood flow to keep north of the equator – she was still as beautiful as the last time he had seen her before she died, "You wanted to see me, Ms. Calendar?"  
  
"Yes, Alexander, please have a seat and I'll get right with you." Xander sat as she was asked to and waited while she finished her work before standing and smoothing out her ankle-length skirt and then her blouse. She looked at him and smiled before sitting on the edge of her desk and crossing one ankle over the other, "Tell me how much you know about ... Angel."  
  
"Angelus, a Master Vampire, roughly two hundred and fifty years old, sired by Darla in Ireland while stumbling out of a bar after a fight. A ruthless bastard, by all accounts, and he earned the title 'Scourge Of Europe' while he, his sire, his childe Drusilla and her childe, William The Bloody, tore their way across the continent from Scotland to China. Roughly at the turn of the century," he went on, doing his best not to smile at the look of shock on her face, "he fed off of the favored daughter of a Romany group of gypsies and was cursed by that Clan with a soul that would be in place until he experienced a moment of true happiness. The Clan name was Kalderash, just as you are not Jenny Calendar, but Janna Kalderash of the Clan Kalderash. Is that enough information for you, Ms. Calendar, or would you like for me to tell you how he was basically useless for the next eighty years and recruited to be a Champion by the Balance Demon Whistler in Times Square, shown the image of Elizabeth Summers and instantly fell in love with her?" His hard-fought battle against the smirk ended as she gaped like a fish and he smirked smugly as she collected herself.  
  
"You know a great deal, Xander," she said rather coyly, "and to tell you the truth had I not looked at your aura I would be forced to ask you just how you know what it is that you know."  
  
"Why Ms. Calendar, I didn't know you were into Voyeurism." He chuckled as her face flushed a brilliant pink color before she got back in control of her emotions, "Alright, I'll bite – what does my aura say about me?"  
  
"That you are a man out of time, have been touched by a higher power the likes of The Powers That Be, and that your little story about how the 'Soldier' was the one who killed Ethan Rayne last night was made of whole cloth." She smiled for a minute, then frowned, "So why are you here?"  
  
Xander smiled and grabbed his cell phone, punching in *69 and calling Lex, as he had been instructed to do in the smallish instruction manual that had been in his packet of things. "Lex? Xander. JC knows about what I did and ... yes ... are you sure you want to do that? Very well, I'll tell her what she needs to know." Xander shut his phone and smiled at the slightly bewildered Techno Pagan, "Sorry, but I had to get authorization to tell you that yes, I am from the future and I have been sent back to make certain changes that, in my time, would have doomed our world forever, and no, you cannot tell anybody, not even your Clan." He stood up from his desk and walked over to where she was seated, a slightly dazed look on her face before he leaned in and whispered into her ear, "Sufficed to day, you staying alive is one of those changes, Jenny. That is the reason I told Buffy what I did, and that is the reason that if Angelus loses his soul, we need to get it back to him as soon as possible – for some odd reason, he's important to the future and I am not allowed to kill him just yet." He pulled back and she shivered slightly before looking at him and smiling brightly, "Be well, Ms. Calendar."  
  
"Please, outside of school time, call me Jenny." She looked around conspiratorially and then leaned in to within an inch of his ear, "And by the way, do Rupert and I ever get together?"  
  
Xander pulled back and smiled sadly, "I could answer that, but I think you know what will happen if I do tell you, Jenny. Still, there is no harm in trying," he gave her one last smile and a wink before spinning around and walking out of the room and once he was sure she wasn't behind the door directly, groaned, "Damned Hyena senses. Nobody should ever smell that good and not be wearing any perfume."  
  
+++  
  
Back at his condo, Xander sank down into his plush chair and sighed, listening to the radio as it pounded out beat after beat of Metallica's 'Of Wolf And Man'; his new choice in music is one he completely blamed on Oz, or would blame on him, because while on patrol the werewolf / musician would sing to the songs of Metallica while searching for new vamps to rise and it was only natural that after such exposure that Xander himself check out those songs on the CD's. There was something about this one particular song that seemed to set both Oz and Xander at peace – the former believing that it had to do with being a werewolf and the latter believing that it was one of the few ways his inner Hyena could be safely released.  
  
The sudden knocking on his door shook him out of his reverie and made him cautiously answer the door, the suppressed SOCOM in his away hand while looking through the peephole, which revealed a small light-brown haired young woman's head bobbing to some music along with the face of one Joyce Summers. Xander paled and shoved the SOCOM into the back of his jeans, pulling his shirt over it before opening the door, "Mrs. Summers, Dawn Patrol, what brings you two here?"  
  
The older Summers woman smiled, "Well, Buffy is studying at the Library tonight and I have a flight to catch, so I was wondering if you could watch Dawn until Buffy comes by to pick her up in a few hours."  
  
"Of course, Mrs. Summers – no problem at all." Xander looked down at Dawn and smirked, "Hail, Sailor Jupiter, and welcome to my humble abode."  
  
Dawn glared up at him; "I thought we both agreed to never bring that up, Xander."  
  
"Play nice, children," Joyce chided lightly, doing her best to hide her smile.  
  
"We will, Mrs. Summers. I put away all the knives and guns out of reach of our little Dawn Patrol," he ruffled the younger Summers' hair, got glared at by said young woman and smiled. "She's as safe here as she is anywhere in Sunnydale."  
  
"Very good, Xander. I shall see you two later," she called, turning and going for her car while Dawn hefted her book bag and walked into the condo, whistling as she saw and liked the new digs.  
  
"Very nice, Xand-man. Who'd ya kill for this?" Dawn set down her bag and started to rummage through it for some homework.  
  
"A guy named Spike, a few demons and a few more to be named at a later date," he quipped back to her out of reflex, but then caught her as she froze while rummaging through her bag. "Dawnie, are you alright?"  
  
"So I wasn't dreaming last night, was I? About the three demons you shot and me really being Sailor Jupiter, I mean." She looked over at him and begged with her eyes for the truth, knowing that he would tell her if she turned 'The Eyes' on him for long enough.  
  
Xander groaned and his resolve to withstand 'The Eyes' vanished like a bribe in the Philadelphia PD (c. late 1970's), "Yeah, Dawnie, those were real demons, and not some poor kids that got iced while in costume and having the bad taste to attack you." He sighed and then jerked his head up, "Hold it, how long have you known about demons, Dawn?"  
  
"Long enough," she admitted, walking over and burring her face into the middle of his chest, wrapping her arms around him and starting to cry about what she had seen the night before. Xander returned her hug and began to comfort her, holding her up and whispering soft words of solace as the radio began to play another of Metallica's hits, 'Hero Of The Day'. [Note: Dawn's not 11-12 in this time, she's 13-14, which will explain the poll at the end of the chapter].  
  
+++  
  
How long they stood there was anybody's guess but another knock at the door broke them apart, the younger of the two wearing a stain in the color of blush on her cheeks as Xander checked the peephole again. Had he been looking at her when he pulled his SOCOM, he would have seen her turn white as a sheet, but he was more interested in the pair of people outside that he didn't know, "Dawnie, stand back." Flipping the safety off, checking the chamber and, seeing a round in place, thumbing back the hammer, he cracked the door open, "Yes, may I help you?"  
  
"You Xander Harris?" The speaker was tall; maybe a shade less than six and a half feet, looked Caucasian, in his early to mid thirties, and spoke with a pronounced British accent while looking for the entire world like David Bowie. His companion was maybe a decade his junior, almost an exact replica save for a few inches shorter and only slightly less threatening.  
  
"Maybe I am. Who are you?"  
  
"Michael, he's David, and we've been sent here by your superiors to ..." Michael's voice trailed off as the door was flung open and the suppressed business end of the SOCOM was leveled at his left eye. "Is this necessary?"  
  
"I answer to one person, and if he wanted me to talk to you he would have contacted me." Xander felt his heart rate pick up a tad and adrenaline start to flood his entire system, but kept frosty, "Now, why don't you tell me whom you really work for."  
  
"The Council, mate," the other of the two, David, said in a broad Cockney accent. "We're looking for Rupert Giles and we figured you'd be able to tell us where the old boy was."  
  
"And if he was not so inclined to tell you his current location? Provided that we even knew it?" Dawn chipped in her two cents from behind the door, making all three guys sigh in exasperation.  
  
"Then we would be forced to find the high school and check the Library," Michael stated.  
  
"Who's the bird ya got back there, mate? She a hottie?" David, Xander could tell, was the master of tact, but also not stupid because his hands came up in surrender when Xander aimed the SOCOM at his 'crown jewels', "Whoa, mate! No need to be touchy."  
  
"I'm babysitting her, and she knows what happens in Sunnydale after dark, boys. And if you must know, she will be fully hot in four or five years." Xander, unable to see Dawn, could feel her grin grow so large her face could split. "Now, if I tell you where he is, you for get this place and it even existed, right?"  
  
"Of course," Michael said immediately while David nodded quickly, the SOCOM not having left it's earlier target and, quite frankly, he looked nervous as hell.  
  
"Check the library," Xander said after a second, pulling the SOCOM back into the doorway. "Good evening, gentlemen, and don't break your promise of forgetting – I'd hate to have to hunt the both of you down to just expend two bullets a piece into your skulls." That said, Xander shut the door on them as the sun began to sink below the horizon.  
  
+++  
  
Dawn and Xander played numerous games of cards that night, some of them Xander lost on purpose, but several of them made him thank whichever deity watching that they weren't playing strip poker because she would have had him out of his pants and in boxers alone before he started to catch her cheating. They talked back and forth over why he had the gun and how he had gotten the apartment (she alluded to the fact that she knew or had guessed about his home life) – both times he fed her a cock and bull story and she seemed to believe it; in fact, it was almost midnight when the knock at his door came and Dawnie was out cold on his couch, covered in a blanket from his linen closet.  
  
After a peek and without preamble, he opened the door and raised his SOCOM, finding Angel's surprised face and Buffy's shocked one on the other side, "Deadboy, Buff, what bring you to my place? Any yes, this is a real gun, loaded with hi-explosive rounds, and they are, quite possibly, very deadly towards vampires."  
  
"W-we're here for Dawn," Angel managed to stammer out, going paler than normal while Buffy started to look annoyed.  
  
"She's asleep on the couch, you two. I'll drop her by in the morning at your place, Buff."  
  
"No, wake her up now."  
  
Both Xander and Angel looked at Buffy like she had lost her mind, "Are you suicidal, because I am not going to wake up a female member of the Summers family from a sound sleep." He stepped out of the way, inviting neither of them in, which meant that Buffy walked in and Angel was forced to stay outside as she went to wake up Dawn.  
  
"You killed him, didn't you." At Xander's blank look, Angel clarified, "Spike, I mean."  
  
"Target of opportunity," Xander lied easily as the youngest Summers woke up in a rather surly mood, kicking her older sister blindly in the shin.  
  
"Dru has been heard from one end of the Sunnydale sewers to the other, screaming about how her 'Kitten' killed Spike." Angel looked at Xander, very much aware that he had not put away the SOCOM, "You realize she will come after you, right?"  
  
Xander winced as Buffy was kicked in the stomach by a still-slumbering Dawn, before retaliating with a pillow to Dawn's face, "Then I'll kill her too. Be advised, Angelus, I know she's your childe, but that doesn't mean that because you have a soul that I trust you. You ever lose that soul and I'll make sure you understand just how bad of an idea it was to lose that soul." Xander looked at Angel, who had stiffened at the use of his 'real' name, "And despite what bottle blonde over there might say, I'm not jealous, just cautious."  
  
"Damnit, Dawn, we're leaving, now!" Both Xander and Angel looked over to see Buffy trying to drag Dawn off the couch by a leg, but the younger Summers was kicking the older one wherever she could. Neither male would get near the altercation – it was a) part of The Code, and b) actually kind of funny to watch The Slayer being foxed by her younger sister.  
  
"Hey, that's my couch you're destroying, Buffy."  
  
"Then tell her to let go!"  
  
"I was asleep, you cow! You hate it when I wake you up, and I hate it even more. Besides, we both know you're just going to moon over Angel instead of making sure I'm asleep anyway."  
  
"Am not!"  
  
"It hasn't stopped you the last three times, has it?"  
  
Both Xander and Angel sighed, knowing that the argument that was starting would be one that went on for a long time ... but that didn't make Xander invite Angel in regardless.  
  
End Chapter 2  
  
AN Quick Poll – by reviewing (one per person, please), whom should Xander start dating in the early going? Your choices are Willow, Jenny, Joyce, or a random female character who will be killed by Angelus. No Buffy or Dawn votes, please. 


	3. Can Friendships Survive

Disclaimers in above chapters (I'm too lazy to do the point and click thing)  
  
First of all this is going to be a LONG chapter, because of all of the crap I have to cover, so bear with me.  
  
AN: Okay, a few things; first of all, Angel was never invited into Xander's place, so he was standing outside the entire time, and Joyce knew where to find Xander because he mentioned it in passing in the Library to Buffy and Willow – that and he's now, miraculously, in the book.  
  
AN2: My poll worked rather well, and as consensus it seems to be a toss up between Jenny, Faith, Dawnie (when she is legal) and a new girl, but I got only one Willow (reluctantly), an Amy (pre-rat) and even a Marcie, Invisible Girl! I can tell you that Joyce (one or two votes as a change of pace) is out b/c she is the 'mother' figure, as is Jenny (for the time being – that may change later, but for now they are just very good friends), and that the random girl will be seen alive for only a little while in this chapter, possibly to be mentioned in later ones, Marcie is a maybe-to-be-seen later on, but Faith seems to be the frontrunner for now. Other choices submitted were Anya, Cordy, and even Harmony (which was followed by an 'eww', while Anya was a 'yech' – Marcie rated a 'not a bad choice' and Cordy was a 'possible).  
  
AN3: Evolution Of The Zeppo is temporarily on hold because my muse isn't speaking to me about it – I think I insulted one of her ideas because she told me, and I have cleaned this up, "Fine, let's see you do this without me!" Needless to say, I'm stuck – any useful ideas as to where the story should go past a Hyena hunting session / forest run, please send them in.  
  
AN4: Several other stories have come to mind – one of those is a 'What Happened To Marcie' blended with a 'Others Changed By Hell-o-ween 1997' set later in S3 or in S4, another is a BTVS/Diablo 2: Lords of Destruction story with Jenny and Xander being the main characters. Comments anyone?  
  
Now let us get on with the fic, ladies and gentlemen.  
  
Chapter 3 – Can Friendships Survive The Truth And The Consequences?  
  
//About one month later, nothing important has happened: It is the day before Thanksgiving, Los Angeles//  
  
Xander stepped off of the bus from Sunnydale to LA and quickly went over to the terminal to collect his duffle bag, not wanting his stash of weapons inside to be found or stolen; Lex had called him the day before while on his way out of the school and told him to pack up, that he was going to LA for a few days. Seeing as he would be gone, he had informed Joyce of his plans, as she had invited him over for Thanksgiving dinner, and she had told both Buffy and Dawn; Buffy had practically ordered him not to go while Dawn had tried her best to use 'The Eyes' on him, but he held strong with the latter and told the former it wasn't his call or hers – it was an order and it was one he was following. Somehow in the process of packing, though, he had been called by and talked into by Jenny to stop by a boutique to picked up several things for her; he had actually made it to the door when both Cordy and Amy, of all people, had shown up and wished him well on his trip – he wasn't sure how they knew and figured it was Buffy trying to get him to follow her orders, but he let that pass and thanked them for their well wishes. When he was met at the bus station by Giles, though, he was starting to get pissed off and accepted the Watcher's words as they came – to be careful and come back, because he (Giles) didn't want to have to tell Buffy that he (Xander) was either hurt or dead; Xander had to admit that it was funny once one took the time to think about it, so he thanked Giles and got on the bus.  
  
Over the previous few weeks, Xander had been working out the problem with bullets that kill both demons and vampires; sure, tracer ammo was readily available, and he'd even had a fair amount of success with blessed hollow points (obtained after visiting a local church near the University run by an old priest who had seen it all), but something more substantial was necessary and Xander had picked up on a line where he could possibly find someone who could fix his problem. It would not be cheap, but Xander had been hitting nests and lairs as of late (without Buffy's notice, of course) and had picked up a fair amount of cash, jewelry, tomes, items and such – all in all, it came out to be a little more than $75,000 worth of stuff and that had been wisely invested in the markets, which had started to pay off with several major jumps. Basically, he wasn't hurting for cash and could buy most of what he needed right now.  
  
Slipping into the bathroom of the bus station, Xander removed the SOCOM and slipped it into a leather shoulder holster, which sat under his left arm and had ammo pouches, four of them, under his right arm, and secured his pistol, ammo and suppressor before slipping on a long leather duster to cover it; he had found out that many people in Sunnydale tended to forget anyone they saw with long coats on and quickly found that it was the only way he could be out past sundown with all of his kit and not get asked anything by anybody.  
  
With all of this done, Xander shouldered his duffle and walked out of the station and down the street towards Downtown LA, the City of Angels. His instincts as a soldier had him watching left and right, looking for possible traps, ambushes, Charlie coming up on his six and general non- combatants, while his Hyena instincts were seeing everyone as potential prey or enemies, but also sniffing for scents of all things demonic; most of what he got was either human or dead, meaning vampire, but every once in a while he'd pick up a scent that was neither and categorized it as well as he could. It was like this all the way to a cheap motel near the station, where he had been told to stay in a certain room and wait for a contact; the motel itself almost overpowered him with the scents of drugs, pain, anger, sex and hopelessness and it took all of Xander's resolve to walk all the way inside to the front desk.  
  
"I need a room for the night."  
  
"Forty bucks, kid," the woman behind the bulletproof glass said dully, one hand holding a cigarette while the other turned the pages of a magazine; it was like something you saw out of a cheap movie or made-for-television show, but as of late, Xander felt as if his life was the same thing.  
  
He handed over two twenties and took the key she gave him, looking at the number and cringing at what he was – 714, the same number of the room that Faith had stayed in, the had lost his virginity in, and the room he almost got killed in too. Either Lex had a seriously disturbed sense of humor or there was a trend going that he didn't know about, "Thanks, ma'am."  
  
Xander walked to the room and immediately looked it over for bugs, rats, other entrances and found a camera that pointed towards the bed in the first five minutes, the meaning of which disturbed Xander more than he cared to admit, but found nothing else other than a small nest of rats; he took the camera out of the light fixture it was wired into, but not before he gave the camera the bird and cut the cords – whoever was watching would be pissed, but it wasn't as if Xander could force himself to care about it at this point. He stripped off the duster and rooted around inside of the duffle for a second before coming up with the rest of his stash – a Randal knife he'd had blessed by the same priest who did the ammo, several stakes that fit into small sheaths in his duster, a small cross-marked squirt bottle of holy water he'd brought along just in case and another bottle, this one unmarked and also filled with a clear liquid, and then a Zippo lighter that had a monogram on it that made him laugh – 'Heaven Doesn't Want Me And Hell Is Afraid I'll Take Over'. Shrugging on his duster again, he put the items back into their proper places, knife at the small of his back, bottles into either pocket, Zippo into his jeans pocket, a stake into each sleeve in a small loop there, then four more into the front seem of his duster, next to the zipper – the one thing about his stakes is that they were not round, but rather flat, only about five inches long, tapered to a point and meant for being concealed.  
  
When the knock came at his door, it wasn't a big surprise, but he had screwed the suppressor on to this SOCOM just in case it was not who he expected it to be; checking the windows, he walked to the door with his gun out of sight and opened the door, chain-lock in place and only allowing it to crack open an inch. Outside was a young woman, maybe a few years older than he, dressed in a pair of dark jeans, a t-shirt and an old jacket, her skin slightly dusky, as if of either Middle Eastern descent, Latin American or a light-skinned African American, her eyes narrowed slightly and dark brown, her hair long, dark and pulled back behind her head, out of the way. Behind her was a man, about the same age and skin tone, so perhaps her brother, dressed much the same way, but he had a slightly bored expression on his face while her's was one of annoyance, "Yes?"  
  
"You Hyena?" Her voice was pitched low but dripped with honey tainted with venom; whoever she was she was pissed at him, Lex or whoever had set up the meet.  
  
"Possibly. Are you Phoenix?"  
  
She snorted disgustedly while the man behind her chuckled quietly, "I swear I'll kill the guy who made up these names."  
  
"Hold on." He shut the door and took off the chain before opening it op, but didn't invite them in, "Did he sound like James Earl Jones?"  
  
"No, he sounded like Hulk Hogan, vato," the guy said somewhat gaily, trying not to piss off the girl anymore but losing the battle with the chuckles. "I'm 'Hawk', but call me Emilio, and this is 'Phoenix', but call her temperamental*oof!" The guy bent over slightly from the not-so-sweet elbow to the gut that had been preceded by an overly sweet smile from 'Phoenix'.  
  
"Tina. Why'd he send you here to us?" She brazenly looked him over, "Not much to look at, but I can tell you've seen some shit." Her voice was slightly condescending and forced Xander to try his best to speak only in a neutral tone.  
  
"You can say that; I found out about vamps one night and then had to dust my best friend-turned-vamp in less than 48 hours. Besides, I've got it where it counts, mija." He smiled at her and looked the both of them over, "Now, as to why I was sent here, I was told that a) you had a line on some vamp killing ammo and b) there was a big raid that you'd need help on. I use blessed .45 hollow points for this," he held up the SOCOM, which made them both step back slightly in fear and shock, "hand-to-hand, improvised weapons and pure balls to dust my vamps, but I also have access to a suppressed UMP sub-machine gun, but it's a waste of ammo most of the time, so I don't bother with it." He let the information sink in for a second before he went on, his voice having lost the somewhat neutral tone he had been using and let a bit of ice creep in, "Frankly, I don't give a damn what you use, but I'd like to take the vamps out instead of just slowing them down."  
  
Tina and Emilio both looked at each other and he could tell that they could tell they were dealing with someone who didn't care what others thought about him, that he did his job and let the gossip go hang, and they were right. When they looked back at him, he was in the process of putting the SOCOM up and sitting on the edge of the single bed, away from the window but still towards the middle of the room. Both of them held a look of slight respect in their eyes as Emilio reached into his pocket slowly and removed a slip of paper, "First off, nest isn't too far from here – it's an old apartment building people have been trying to tear down for years and is mostly condemned above the third floor."  
  
"Basement and floor plans?"  
  
Tina shook her head, "Useless. One of our people got in there after sunrise one morning and it's been completely changed. We'll hit it about at dawn and them we'll go see the guy who sells the ammo, which is either regular or hollow point and enspelled to do elemental damage – it's random but it always works."  
  
"Which elements?"  
  
"Fire, Ice, Lightning and even an all-around Poison that hurts 99% of all demons," Emilio rattled off with a shrug. "Guy swears he came up with it on his own, but I see the figurines he has and say he stole the idea from some D&D book he read once."  
  
Xander snorted, standing up as he did, "Figures. So, what now?"  
  
"We go our way, you go yours and we'll meet there," Tina pointed at the slip of paper in Xander's hands, "about six am tomorrow. Peace." With that, she and Emilio left, the latter of the two flipping him a jaunty salute before he shut the door.  
  
+++  
  
Xander had passed an hour in the room flipping through the free cable, but found most of it was porn and very bad porn at that, so he pulled on his duster, having never removed his shoulder leathers or knife, and made his way outside to see LA at it's best at night. Here and there you'd see dealers running their smack or weed to some kid stupid enough to use it, a pimp watching over women who called out to passing motorists and pedestrians to sell their 'wares', which were prominently displayed in tight clothes and short skirts (he got more than a few propositions himself, but figured that he was here to work, not risk his life with the next Typhoid Mary), and then even saw a few 'people' dressed in trench coats, scars and fedoras going into what appeared to be an empty lot and ... disappearing?  
  
Xander stepped out of the flow of traffic, making sure that nobody was in the area, and then went to the supposedly empty lot, looking around again and making sure his gun was loose in it's holster before stepping forwards a few paces; he could feel an energy wash over him as he stepped in and kept his cool as a building materialized out of nothing. It took a second to process what had happened and to come to the decision that the spell wasn't offensive in nature, but rather a defensive field that kept the building out of the limelight. Satisfied, he waited for a gap in the human traffic and walked out of the 'empty' lot, flowing with it again until he came outside of a small diner – his stomach chose that point to make it known that he was in need of sustenance in it's disturbingly loud way that turned one or two heads before he walked in.  
  
"You'll have to share," one of the waitresses said as soon as he came in, as the place was fairly packed.  
  
"Thanks," he said back, looking around for a table and found one with a lady in a denim jacket. "Mind if I sit here?" She waved him to sit down and went back to her coffee – she was in her early-to-mid twenties, twenty- seven on the outside, with blonde streaks in her hair, fair skin, a rather beautiful face and blue gray eyes that held a sense of wisdom and just a hint or two of steel.  
  
One of the waitresses walked up and handed him a cup of coffee, "What'll ya have, babe?"  
  
Xander looked at the woman and smiled lightly, "Burger, all the way, fries and whatever she wants." This got a look from the both of them, and he defended himself, "Hey, I'm feeling generous and I can hear your stomach from here."  
  
The woman in denim blushed lightly and ordered the same as him before going back to her coffee, "Thanks, I'm Kate Lockley."  
  
"Xander Harris, and it's a pleasure, Miss Lockley." He added a cream and three sugars to his coffee, stirring it, "Is it always this busy here?"  
  
She smiled, "No, just on Fridays, when it's free coffee night." She looked around again and then focused her eye on his, reaching into her jacket for something, "So, why do you have a gun under your left arm?"  
  
He looked at her oddly until she flashed him her Detective's badge, then he slowly reached into his hip pocket, "I never go out unarmed, Detective, and as you can see, I have a permit." He passed the card over and she looked at it, scrutinizing it very carefully before passing it back.  
  
"If you're eighteen I'll eat my badge."  
  
He gave her a slightly enigmatic smile, "I'm older than I look, Detective, but thanks for the compliment. I'd ask you your age but I don't feel like getting slapped, so I'll call you at twenty four and leave it at that."  
  
She gave him an odd look before smiling in a friendlier manner, "Twenty six, actually, but thanks. Forty-five?"  
  
He looked at her for a second, and then chuckled, "No, I'm not that old, and yes, a .45 caliber." Any other questions and responses were cut off by the arrival of the food, which both Xander and Kate attacked with gusto – he found the burger slightly over-done, but the fries and coffee more than made up for it.  
  
After they finished their dinners and let out a celebratory, but muffled, burp apiece, they stood and left the booth, Xander dropping the bill and a tip on the table and waved goodbye to the waitress, who smiled and wished him a good evening as both he and Kate left the diner. It was now pushing nine pm and Xander turned to Kate, "So, what is there to do around this city at this time of night?"  
  
She smiled, "For me, work, for you, whatever you want to do that isn't illegal – I'd hate to have to arrest you after buying me dinner."  
  
He grinned, "You know, if it weren't for the fact that I knew you were a cop, I'd say something to the effect of the thought of you, me, that badge and your handcuffs paint a pretty vivid picture in my mind, Kate." This got a hearty laugh out of her and he stuck out a hand, "Glad to meet ya, Kate. Be safe."  
  
"You too, Xander, and extra points for the handcuffs remark," she grinned, walking towards the other side of the street a brisk walk, the grin never leaving her face as he turned and started to walk around with no real destination.  
  
+++  
  
Sooner than he wanted, he was dragged back into his reality by the slightly muffled screams of a woman coming from an alleyway just up the street of a particularly dead neighborhood; he'd hoped not to have to stake any vamps before morning, but it appeared that it was going to happen. He looked around as he made for the alley, making sure there weren't any cops, and then drew his SOCOM and attached the suppressor before going in.  
  
There were three guys surrounding a girl, maybe in her late teens and in an obscenely short skirt on the ground, and none of them were giving off any vamp vibes, so Xander steeled himself, put the gun behind his back and called out, "Excuse me, miss, but do you need help?"  
  
"Help me, please!" "Fuck off, white boy," "Nothing here to see," and "Leave. Now," came back as responses to his question, all of which made him then pull the gun out from behind his back, and that got the attention of the three thugs.  
  
"Step off her, boys." The Laser Aiming Module painted a big red dot on Thug 1's chest, as he was the biggest and the closest. All three guys looked at him and slowly backed off with raised hands, allowing the woman to get up and run towards him, but she was about half-way between the thugs and him when he shifted his aim to her chest and popped three rounds into her heart, one of the Dutch-loaded blessed hollow points or wood-filled rounds doing the job and turning her to dust, which swept past him with the inertia she had built up.  
  
The three thugs crossed themselves quickly and multiple times, mumbling almost-silent prayers as Xander walked towards them, "Now, boys, that was a vampire and had I not stopped you from trying to rape her, you'd all be dead and, if you were really lucky, you'd stay that way. Savvy?"  
  
"Si," came the unified answer, all three staying right where they were as he put away his gun.  
  
"Good, now can you tell me anything about an old apartment building on," he rattled off the street and saw all three of them pale. "More of those things are probably there and I'd like to have all the info I can before we raid it."  
  
All three started singing like canaries for several minutes, giving him bits and pieces about the devils that lived on that street and how nobody went there after dark. When they were finished he moved out of the way and they scooted past him along the way, running out of the alley and down the street as soon as they felt he was a safe distance away.  
  
+++  
  
Morning came all too soon for Xander after saving the lives of the three thugs – first he'd found himself in Chinatown and in the middle of one hell of a wedding reception for three couples, where he'd been asked to join the dancing and festivities, then he had found his back towards his motel, where he was once again propositioned by several young 'ladies of the night', but the capper was when he received a call from Kate at almost four in the morning for an invite to breakfast, as her shift was now over. They talked for almost an hour while gnawing on slightly overdone waffles, good biscuits and even an honest-to-God Denver Omelet while enjoying their coffee; sadly, Kate yawned and Xander smiled sadly, "Go home, Kate. Grated it can't help someone as gorgeous as you, but you need your beauty sleep."  
  
She smiled sleepily at him, the caffeine of her coffee having yet to hit her system, "Keep flirting with me like that and I'll have to take you home with me, but neither of us will be getting any sleep."  
  
He sighed, forcing his mind to stay on business, "God I wish I could, but I have a meeting to get to just after sunrise a few blocks from here," he looked over the buildings and saw the sun just starting to lighten up the sky, "and it's almost sunrise."  
  
She reached into her jacket pocket and pulled out a card, a number scrawled on the back, "Here, then call me when you get done and we'll have lunch."  
  
He accepted the card and gave her one in return, "Well, I will certain try to call you, but given how tired you look, I think I'll let you sleep and have a little something waiting for you at work tonight." He smiled as she beamed at him, then got up, "Now, unfortunately, I have to go Kate. Be safe."  
  
"See ya," she yawned, even as he paid the tab.  
  
Xander left for the apartment building and scanned the area, knowing that the others were already there and waiting as he walked up; he wasn't wrong because as he stopped in front of the building a van with blacked out windows pulled up to him and the door opened to reveal both Emilio and Tina, dressed in what could passingly be called 'combat clothes' (i.e. what they had worn the day before), holding a pair of Glock 18's with extended magazines and along with them were three other people, each of them trying to look tough but Xander could smell the fear coming off them in waves.  
  
"'Bout time you got here, white bread," Tina snarled at him, to which Xander smirked back as the others tried to load Glock pistols. "What's so funny?"  
  
"Your people don't have the first clue what they're doing and you're worried about my punctuality?" He reached forwards, snagged a Glock from one of the others, who happened to be strapping Irish lad with flaming red hair, pale skin and gray eyes, before dropping the mag, clearing the chamber and disassembling the Glock in about ten seconds, all the while still looking into Tina's eyes, before putting it back together, slapping the mag in and chambering a round. He handed it back to the young man and pointed at the barrel, "Bullet comes out of here very quickly. Make sure whoever you're pointing it at isn't one of us, me especially." That done, Xander reached back into his jacket and, instead of removing the SOCOM as Emilio expected from the look on his face, removed the suppressed UMP that he had picked up just before going to get breakfast with Kate.  
  
"Jesus T. Christ on a crutch," the Irish young man said in a slight accent. "Where in the blurry Hell did you get that?"  
  
"Classified," Xander said with a slight grin on his lips. Chambering a round, he tucked the weapon back into his coat before adjusting the strap to help conceal it, "Anyone else want to go in and dust vamp besides me, Emilio and Tina?"  
  
Tina snarled several vile oaths in Spanish while Emilio reached back into the van and removed a pump-action shotgun, loading it with slugs, "Get this straight, white bread, I don't need you, WE don't need you, and you are here to back us up."  
  
Xander stood his ground and snarled back, "Get this, mija, I am here following orders from someone a LOT higher up the food chain than you; get the fact that I have forgotten more things about Close Quarters Combat and Covert Operations than you will EVER know, and get that I don't care about what you think – I shoot the shit with meaner and tougher people than you at your worst, and they think I am a joke, but they don't know jack about me. So get your head out of your ass, into the game, think about our current objective and direct your anger in a positive direction like those vampires in there." Xander then spun on his heel and began walked around the van towards the apartment building, knowing that whether they wanted to admit it or not, that he was right about the last point he made and would follow.  
  
+++  
  
The clearing of the apartment building was relatively quick but very ugly; corpses of former meals were everywhere and covered in lime to cover the smell, but Xander's mind blocked those out as he shoved a stake into the hears of every one with one of the kids, Robin, covering him. Emilio covered them all at the door with the shotgun; Tina, Eric (the Irish kid) and Bob (both he and Robin, he found out, were kids from their neighborhood) covered the rest of the corpses as Xander worked.  
  
They started at the top floor and had worked their way down silently, Xander using the UMP to blow out the throats of any vamp and the others used the vamp's body to muffle the booms of their pistols; his ammo worked well enough, but after seeing a vamp first burn, then two others shatter from being frozen, one decay from the inside out and a fourth catch on fire from being electrocuted, Xander really wanted to get his hands on that ammo.  
  
Eventually they made it down to the basement and Emilio blew the door open at the lock with one shot from the shotgun; Xander went in fast and hard, tagging four vamps as he went while the rest fired off single shots and killed vampires for good before taking his wounded down.  
  
"Clear! Leave one," he barked out, sweeping the room with the gun and his eyes.  
  
"Why?"  
  
"You can't get answers out of a pile of dust, Eric." Xander said, pulling out his knife and picked away at a grime-covered safe door that had been in the process of being closed, "Emilio, guard the door, Tina, you and Robin count up what's in here, Eric, verify it with a count of your own and then split it up evenly six ways." Before they had a chance to argue, he kicked the mostly-healed vamp in the groin and sent him back down again with a strangled cry of agony, "Shut it, shit face. How many of your kind are here at any given time?" His voice was cold as ice as he removed his SOCOM, suppressor attached, and shot the vamp in the knee when he didn't respond, "Listen, I can keep this up all day long. Tell me what I want to know and we'll release you."  
  
The vamp was silent for a second before muttering out. "Twelve, but Nina went out last night to get us food and hasn't returned."  
  
"Dressed like a hooker, short, kinda school-girl-looking with mousy brown hair and green eyes?" At the vamp's incredulous look, Xander smiled wolfishly ... or like a Hyena, "Killed her trying to trick three gang bangers into raping her so she'd be able to put the whammy on them. She tried to get me with that scheme too, but I've seen it played better by older and more powerful."  
  
"Who?"  
  
"Darla." The vamp's face went white as a sheet and Xander cackled slightly, "Now, anything else you want to tell us?"  
  
"Eat shit, mortal." Xander didn't bother with the pistol this time; he merely reached into his pocket and removed a squeeze bottle marked with a cross before popping the top and shooting a stream of water into the vamp's slightly open mouth – a stream of holy water, that is.  
  
Xander stood up as the vampire thrashed in agony, turning to see all five of the kids staring at him in abject horror at what he had done, but then shook themselves out of it as he removed another bottle and emptied it on the ground leading up to the vamp, getting some of it on the clothes of the now-moaning corpse as he healed, "Again I ask you, is there anything else you want to tell us?"  
  
"Stash of books and items on the second floor," the vampire gasped out as the holy water burns in his mouth healed slowly. "Now let me go!"  
  
Xander flicked out his Zippo and lit it, "I said I'd release you, shit face." Dropping the lighter on the stream of fluid, he watched as the lighter fluid for a barbeque pit caught up and started to roast the vampire, "I never said I'd let you go." Turning around and blocking out the vampires pain-filled screams, Xander went over to Eric, who was furiously counting the money, dividing it up and looking quite sick as well, "Count?"  
  
"Twenty six hundred apiece, man. That was cruel, what you did to him."  
  
There was no humor in Xander's voice when he replied, "Eric, you have no idea how very humane that was for me to kill a vampire - if necessary I can keep them alive for days to get information out of them and then make their deaths slow and even more painful." Grabbing his stack and putting away his UMP, he smiled, "Now if you will excuse me, I have a stash to go and find."  
  
+++  
  
/Sunday after Thanksgiving, Sunnydale/  
  
Xander looked at the small collection of tomes, amulets, rings, and statues that he had gotten from the stash in the old apartment, sighing and trying to think of a way he was going to get Giles to look over them and possibly identify them; Giles probably be very busy over the next few days ... and nights ... since what Jenny had said under her breath when he dropped off her packages from a lingerie shop in LA – Xander didn't WANT to know what she meant by, "Oh, I'm sure he'll like this," but unfortunately his knowledge of future events made him aware of how she was found dead, where she was found and what she was wearing when she died.  
  
Another good thing that he had accomplished was picking up several boxes of .45 caliber ammunition enspelled to do random elemental damage when it hit anything demonic; it had only cost him a Franklin a box, but given what kind of damage they did, it was worth it considering each box had to be enspelled separately and not in batches, like Xander would have done it. He hadn't had the chance to see the results himself, but was fairly sure he'd get the chance to see them in action in a little while when he went on patrol. Looking over at the other things on the table, he saw the card Kate had given him and smiled even wider – he'd kept his promise and brought her a box of assorted pastries that night, finding that her favorite was also his in the form of bear claws; she'd had one last surprise for him in the form of a peck on the cheek in front of her entire squad room (he flushed at the memory of the hoots, hollers, cheers and cat calls that had gotten them) before telling him to caller, she then leaned in and whispered, "After you graduate high school." The tone in her voice broke his heart somewhat – it was slightly resigned, but he knew as well as she did that it wouldn't have worked out even if he were already out of school.  
  
Sighing to himself Xander strapped on his thigh holster with the SOCOM in it, grabbed several clips loaded with the new ammunition, and walked out of his condo as the sun fell in Sunnydale. He knew that with the kids coming back from holiday, the vamps would be out that night for a late snack ... and less than five minutes outside of his door he was proven right by a shrill scream and the sounds of a scuffle.  
  
She was tall, maybe five feet seven inches, and had a body that was built like that of a swimmer with what appeared to be a natural light tan, dark hair that had come out of it's holder and fell to the middle of her back, and looked so scared that Xander felt furious at the vamp for playing with his food first. His SOCOM cleared the holster before he knew what happened and a .45 caliber tumbler entered the vamp's chest a fraction of an instant later – the magic kicked in as soon as it entered and froze the vamp solid for a split second before it shattered and then melted out of existence.  
  
He lowered the gun and looked down at her, her wide, full of fear and an interesting purple color that made him think of lilacs for some odd reason, "Are you okay, Miss?"  
  
"I-I think so. W-what was that?"  
  
"A vampire." He saw several pieces click together in her mind and waited for the inevitable – her eyes rolled into the back of her head and she passed out. Not one to leave dinner for a lazy vamp, especially after saving her, Xander walked over and picked both her and her bag up, rather easily since his Hyena strength allowed him to bench about three hundred pounds with ease, and started the trek back to his place.  
  
He returns home and puts her on his couch, sitting across form her in his chair as she starts to come to; she was, without a doubt, one of the most beautiful women he had ever met. Her eyes then chose that moment to open and look around somewhat wildly, seeing only him and an unfamiliar room as she sat up, clutching a pillow to he chest, "Where are we?"  
  
"My place in the condos near the University; are you well? Do you need any water or aspirin, Miss ...?"  
  
She shook her head, "Collins, Brittany Collins and no, just some answers, and thank you." Xander smiled and began to regale her with the real history of the world, about vampires, demons, et al, and all throughout she didn't say a word – her eyes were focused, he could almost see the wheels in her mind clicking along faster and faster until she asked a question, the question, "And how do you fit into al of this?"  
  
Xander was expecting that question, actually, but still didn't have what he called a good answer, "I know that it is out there and I can't turn my back on it now that I know. Another thing that I know is that all vamps gotta die, and I'm going to do my best to do so."  
  
Brittany smiled slightly, "Sounds vaguely like OCD." At his confused look she explained, "Obsessive Compulsive Disorder. I'm a psychology major at UCSD." She fired questions at him for several minutes before he could get in a word edge-wise, then he gave answers and then she started asking more questions – it was a cycle that went on for several hours, actually, until she yawned and looked over at a small clock on his wall, "It's three thirty." She looked back over at Xander and growled, "I'm awake at three thirty on a school day with an eight am class!"  
  
"Look at the bright side," he pointed out. "If I hadn't come along tonight, you'd probably be dead right now."  
  
"I have an eight am class tomorrow and I'm sitting here, talking with a cute guy who saved my life at three thirty in the morning!" She pitched a glare at him, "Thanks for the rescue, but I need my beauty sleep."  
  
"At least let me walk you to your place. It's not safe out there."  
  
"I live one floor down and two doors west of you, Xander. I'll be fine." Brittany got up, leaned over to him and kissed him on the cheek, "Thanks for the save hero." With that, she walked out of the door, leaving a slightly stunned Xander in his chair, her scent filling his nostrils.  
  
+++  
  
/Meanwhile, Outside Thirty seconds later/  
  
Brittany Collins was a about ten steps from her door when a soft voice stopped her, "I smell Kitten on you." She spun to see red-rimmed golden eyes and opened her mouth to scream, but couldn't as the shadow's hand snapped out and grabbed her throat, "Hush, little one. Miss Edith says you could be my Kittens undoing."  
  
Brittany tried with all of her might, but the shadow drew her into the shadows, hand still wrapped around her throat, and couldn't even scream as she felt a pair of fangs rip into her throat, feeding from her lifeblood. Her struggles weakened and almost ceased when she vaguely felt something pouring into her mouth and heard the voice again, "What a Childe you shall be." After that, everything went black as death claimed her.  
  
+++  
  
/One week later/  
  
Xander sits in the Library, fuming at the changes that had been the timeline just because he had killed a vamp or two extra – Angelus was now loose because Buffy couldn't keep her legs closed any longer and a full month or so earlier than last time! If he was angry, though, Giles was in what could only be called a towering fury as he stalked back and forth behind where Buffy sat, snarling oath after oath about her stupidity as she sobbed, yet oddly, Xander felt nothing this time around and kept his face in a calm mask.  
  
Xander then looked over at Jenny, whom looked both pale as death and very angry at once; he knew she had the Orb of Thesula ready to give Angelus back his soul, making him Angel again, but just on principals he knew she would not tell about the spell unless absolutely necessary, so he spoke up, "We can re-curse him." Everyone stopped and looked at him, Buffy with her face splitting in a wide smile until he spoke again, "Then we give him a twenty-four hour head start to get the hell out of Sunnydale."  
  
"Why?" Everyone now looked at Buffy, "He hasn't done anything wrong!"  
  
"Yet." Xander, Jenny and Giles snapped at the same time, but only Xander continued, "He's evil Buffy, and normally I would say stake him, but I had a little visit just prior to coming here tonight; it seems that The Powers That Be need him alive, sort of, to complete a destiny as a Champion ... outside of Sunnydale."  
  
Everyone looked shocked and it was Giles that first regained the power of speech, "You spoke with The Powers That Be?"  
  
"One of them; they wanted to give me a heads up because they knew that I am the only one here capable of killing the bastardo bambino di a capra and not lose any sleep over it." He sighed and looked over at Jenny, "Can you do it?"  
  
"Of course she can, Kitten," came a voice from the bookshelves as three figures walked out of them, one being Dru and another being a smirking Angelus, but the third was cloaked in a robe, "but the Dark Gypsy won't."  
  
The Scooby Gang jumped to attention, Xander drawing his SOCOM, sans suppressor, and targeted the robed figure, as Dru was still needed to kill Kendra, "Well, this saves me the trouble of hunting you three down."  
  
"You killed my Spiky, Kitten; you, your musket man and the puppy, such a naughty bunch who shant be getting their treats." The Vampiress smiled insanely, "But I have a treat for you, Kitten. My Childe, show yourself."  
  
The robed vampire, as Drusilla had said Childe, stepped forwards and pulled back their hood, revealing the pale face of Brittany Collins, which had a cruel smile twisting it, "Hello, Alexander."  
  
Xander had to put all of his concentration as to not drop the SOCOM, "Brittany?"  
  
"Yes, it is I. My, what a turn of events, no? You save me from a vampire and in less than six hours I am then turned into one – but not by just any vampire, though, but the vampire who just happened to be the sire of William the Bloody! Remember him, Xander? The vampire you killed on Halloween?"  
  
Everyone looked over at Xander in shock, Angelus included, but Xander kept his flat mask in place as he draw a bead on her chest and drew the hammer back on the SOCOM, "Yes, I remember."  
  
"Well, now they knew that secret, but how about your other secret, Kitten?" Everyone looked at Dru and she continued, "You killed the Chaos Man, not your musket man or even your bad puppy; you fibbed to everyone your hold dear and near to your heart."  
  
"A necessary evil, Dru, and I'm very sure that both you and Deadboy know all about evil."  
  
Angelus took that moment to chuckle in surprise, "Well, well, well, if the hits don't just keep on coming tonight, Xander. I do have to say that while I am not surprised that you killed Spike, but you took a human life and then lied about it? Tisk Tisk, boy; what does that say about your character?"  
  
Xander let out a sharp bark of non-humorous laughter, "I've done worse than lie to people, Angelus, and trust me when I say that murder isn't at the top of that list." This got a look of shock from all present as he continued, "Let me tell you something, Deadboy; you're going to die, and I'm going to be there when it happens, my oath to God." (AN: No, this is not foreshadowing – Xander is not Lex.)  
  
"Ah, well, I would say that sounds like something a White Knight would say, but honestly, would a White Knight murder someone?"  
  
Xander's air shifted from Brittany's chest to Angelus' crotch, "In a heartbeat, Deadboy, if the situation desires it." He sees both Dru and Brittany vanish back into the bookshelves and looks back to see Angelus is now sweating at where the gun was pointed, "You're lucky that I have orders to keep you alive, Deadboy. So start running and pray that I never see you again." That said, Xander puts away the SOCOM and turns to sit down.  
  
Nobody moves as he sits, but then Angelus smirks in a superior manner and then waltzes out of the Library using not the sewer entrance, but rather the door leading to the school. As the door shuts Xander waits for everyone to come back to his or her collective senses and it is Buffy who does so first.  
  
"You lied to us? You killed Ethan Rayne?" She glared at him even harder and Xander was mildly surprised that he wasn't spontaneously combusting, "Give me one reason I shouldn't beat you right now, Xander."  
  
"Alright, Buffy, how about I ask you why I shouldn't kill you for releasing Angelus? I killed Ethan Rayne because I was ordered to – I don't care to explain just whom it was I got my orders from, but needless to say I followed them and now we come back to why I shouldn't kill you, Buffy? You're the Vampire SLAYER, not the Vampire LAYER."  
  
Giles took that moment to chip in, "Yes, be that as it may, I must ask you if this 'Lex' character is the one who ordered your to kill Rayne."  
  
"That's classified, Giles. Next?" He looked over at Jenny, then at Willow and finally Oz, "Anyone else want to ask me or question my morals, because believe me I have some real doozies for answers."  
  
Surprisingly it was Oz who spoke up first, "Dru said your 'bad puppy'. Who is that?"  
  
Xander smiled at that, "Well, Oz, a few weeks after I met Buffy I was possessed and made Alpha by a Hyena spirit." The musician looked surprised and then leaned closer to Willow as if to protect her, which made Xander smile, "Buffy and Willow both thought that Giles exorcised him from my mind, but all they did was shunt him into a dark part of my mind and put me back in control." He looked over at Buffy and felt his eyes flash, making her pale as he spoke again, "Don't bother trying to get either him or the Soldier out of me; they have almost completely merged with and on the off chance that you didn't kill me with the spell, then you'd drive me completely insane."  
  
"Who are you, Alexander Harris?" Willow stood up from the table and took a step back, "What happened to you to turn you into ... this?"  
  
"Life happened, Willow, and while we are on the subject of turning, let me say this to you, Buffy – anyone hear dies because of your stupidity and necrophilia, I'll kill you before their bodies are cold. Let the souls of all that he kills be on your conscience, Slayer, and PRAY that all of this little group stays safe." That said, Xander walked out of the Library, unsure if he would ever be able to call the Scooby Gang his friends ever again. (AN: Willow and Oz hooked up sometime while Xander was in LA – it seemed tedious to write about it, so I didn't. AR.)  
  
+++  
  
/One week later/  
  
It had been a little over a week since the last time that Xander had seen any of the Scoobies, but he also knew that Angelus had not had his soul restored because Jenny was stone-walling them with rather flimsy excuses; frankly, he didn't care. If they couldn't deal with who he really was, then maybe they weren't the good friends he had thought them to be.  
  
Several times he had gone out hunting Angelus, Dru and Brittany, but every time he had come up against them to kill the youngest of the trio, he couldn't seem to bring himself to pull the trigger on her. It was frustrating to say the least, but in the end it knew that she would be dust either by his hand, Buffy's or some lucky hunter's.  
  
His phone chose that moment to ring and he answered it, "Go."  
  
"Library. Now. Kendra is about to die." Lex terminated the call and Xander felt the color drain from his face – he'd been trying to get ready for the event, but frankly he couldn't even though he knew that it was necessary. Quickly grabbing his gear, he raced to the Library, hoping against hope he would get there to save the Slayer's life, so gun drawn, once again without the suppressor, he burst through the door even as Dru fled into the bookshelves and Kendra began to choke on her own blood.  
  
Dropping his gun, he rushed forwards and collected the dark-skinned Slayer as she began to die; her eyes pleaded with him to try and save her, but they also held a resignation to her fate even as the life began to leave her eyes, "Please forgive me, Kendra. I swear to you that there will be vengeance for this."  
  
Xander didn't know how long he sat there with Kendra's cooling body still in his grasp, but it was Giles who found them there on the floor of the Library; Xander had been doing his best to suppress the tears but had lost that battle at some point and could feel them tracing their way down his cheeks even as Giles swore softly as he walked up, "Xander? What happened?"  
  
In a voice that Xander barely recognized as his own, he replied, "Dru killed Kendra, Giles."  
  
The Watcher stepped in front of him and knelt down, looking into his eyes before speaking again, "Were you told of this by Lex?" When Xander nodded Giles swore, "And why didn't you bloody well try and stop it?"  
  
"Orders to keep the balance. Kendra's death shall call a Slayer who is a lynch pin in the balance of Light and Dark – should she fall to the darkness it will cause an untold suffering among the people of the world when a destiny that should not be comes into being." Xander looked up into Giles' eyes and blinked before whispering our hoarsely, "I wish it could have been different, Giles, but these were orders I have fought since the day I got them; Kendra had a great deal of potential as a human being and I wanted a chance to get her to realize that."  
  
"I am sure you did, Xander, but now she is dead and that potential is lost." Giles took the body from Xander's grasp after a little difficulty and then knelt back down in front of him, "What are you going to do now?"  
  
Xander felt his face twist into a snarl, his vision clouding in a red fog of pure anger, hate and rage, "Kill. Dru has been off limits until now, but not any more." Xander used this rage to pull himself up from the floor and then pick up his SOCOM even as a shoe that neither he nor Giles wore squeaked, causing him to turn and see the rest of the Scooby Gang, plus Cordy and Amy, staring at him, all of them with a look of sorrow on their faces as all of the pieces clicked into place. Ignoring most of them, he looked over at Jenny, "Do the spell and give that bastard his soul back. Now. I've been informed that Whistler will be there to get him the hell out of town and to put him on the path to redemption, so don't bother trying to ever find him again."  
  
He could see Buffy's face split into a huge grin, but he could care less as he brushed past them, but was stopped by Willow's hand on his elbow, "Why didn't you tell us?"  
  
"You can't understand what I'm doing, Willow, not you or anyone else here. Sufficed to say I am forced to do things that none of you can – kill, steal, lie, even let people I know I can save die because the balance must be kept in order for a future nobody wants to come to pass." He pulled his arm out of her grasp and made his way to the door before something finally hits him, making him snarl – Angelus may be getting his soul back, but that didn't mean he couldn't feel a little pain first.  
  
+++ /3rd person POV/  
  
Dressed in black from head to toe, a being who radiated a rage and a want for vengeance, stepped out of the shadows with a weapon in his hand that didn't register until he leveled it at the three minions guarding the door to Angelus' mansion – it was a gun and they all began to laugh as they all knew that bullets didn't kill vampires ... and then the first vampire began to scream in agony a split second after the first shot exited the weapon with a 'chuff' of air, bursting into a ball of flame as the person shifted his aim and shot the other two vampires, one shattering into a million shards of ice that melted as they hit the ground and the other convulsing on the ground as if being electrocuted, then bursting into fire. The figure paid the piles of dust little heed as he swept into the mansion, the red rage feeling coming off of him now turning to ice even as he drew a bead on and fired on vampire after vampire; singles, doubles, even groups of three and four all fell before him as he cut through the ranks of minions as if he were a scythe reaping grain from th field.  
  
The figure changed out magazines as two more vampires stepped out of the shadows, one in a robe and wearing a cruel smile while the other held a doll and was dressed in a classic 18th century dress that, had she been alive at that point, she would have been able to get any guy she wanted into any position she dreamed of. As they were, however, they both began to chuckle as the figure approached them, the one with the doll speaking, "Hello, Kitten. Have you come to play and have tea?"  
  
The figure didn't answer verbally, merely raising his weapon again and putting a trio of shots into the robed figure that had once been Brittany Collins, sending her body to rest and the demon that had inhabited that body screaming to Hell. Had anyone else been there to witness what had just happened, they would have sworn that the one called 'Kitten' was a vampire with the way he had coldly dealt death, but nobody else was so nobody but the woman with the doll saw him remove his finger from the trigger and drop the weapon to the ground, removing a stake from the small of his back, an action that made the woman clap in child-like glee and bounce around.  
  
"Oh, you HAVE come here to play, Kitten."  
  
"No, Drusilla, I haven't." The voice from the figure held a tone of ice that could have been identified by those who had heard it before and lived to desperately try and forget it, "I have not come here to play, Dru; I have come seeking vengeance for one who cannot seek it herself."  
  
"The No-Fun Slayer died in your arms, she did; the stars whisper to me how you grieve for her, Kitten and Mummy wants to send you to death so you can meet her again." She lunged forwards, hands spread out and fingers splayed as claws at the figure, whom merely stood where he was without changing anything but his eye color, which had been a dark brown but now burned a feral yellow green color.  
  
Together they danced the dance of death, striking the other wherever they could whenever they could, before there was a mistake made – to anyone else who would have been watching, it was a slight over-reaching of a quick punch on the part of the woman, but to the man in black, it was an open invitation to end her unlife. He slapped away her arm and drove the wooden stake into the heart of the female vampire, who stood there for a second in abject shock before crumbling into dust without so much as a word or a whimper.  
  
Standing there alone in the hallway of the Mansion, surrounded by dust, was Alexander Harris, a warrior in his own right, an assassin to all things evil, a force of good who walked in the darkness; his face was blank, flat, as if etched in stone, but a single tear rolled down his cheek and fell to the ground as he whispered, "The will of Vengeance be done." Not bothering to collect either the stake or the suppressed weapon, he walked into the courtyard of the Mansion where a figure dressed in pimp's clothing (circa late 1970's) stood over the huddled form of the Master Vampire known as Angelus.  
  
"Kid."  
  
"Whistler."  
  
"He has his soul back."  
  
Xander Harris pulled the un-suppressed SOCOM from his side and, even as the doors of the Mansion flew open to reveal the running forms of Buffy Summers and Rupert Giles, he leveled the weapon at the vampire, "Good for him." He pulled the trigger twelve times; twelve forty-five caliber blessed hollow point rounds screamed through the air and struck the grounded vampire, each hitting into separate, non-lethal, areas of his body and splintering into fragments – each fragment was blessed and caused an excruciating amount of pain to anything undead, but this time the targets chosen (knees, shoulders, stomach, pelvis, lungs, legs and arms – two rounds per area or limb) sent Angel into an almost catatonic state from the pain.  
  
Whistler said nothing, knowing that the kid could have, had he been so inclined, sent every round into the vampire's body in lethal areas; he merely raised an eyebrow as if to say, "Was that really necessary," and watched as Buffy Summers, the Vampire Slayer, rushed forwards the held the screaming form of Angel while glaring up at Xander, who merely shrugged and reloaded his weapon with a practiced ease, but where the magazine before had been marked with a yellow (meaning non-magical) tape, the one he inserted had a red stripe around the bottom and everyone knew what red meant – lethal or dangerous.  
  
Nobody said anything for a few minutes while Angel healed slowly, but as soon as he stopped screaming, Xander looked at Whistler, "You have until daybreak to get him out of town or he joins his Childe and both Grandchildren as dust."  
  
"You got it, kid."  
  
"NO!" Buffy surged to her feet and pointed an accusing finger at Xander, "He's not going any-where and that is final! You did all of this because you're jealous of what he and I have."  
  
"Shut up, Buffy." Three words was all it took to quiet the Slayer, but it wasn't Xander or Whistler who said them. Rupert Giles looked over at Xander, "If he chooses to stay, what are you going to do?"  
  
"Kill him."  
  
"But you were ordered to allow him to live."  
  
"That's why I'm giving him the chance to leave, Giles. If I wanted him dead I would have hit this place with RPG's, .50 caliber rounds and lots of both of them, too; I have followed my orders to the letter so far."  
  
"He's staying." Buffy's words were ignored, so she spoke again, "Don't either one of you have any concern for what I'm saying?"  
  
Xander looked at Buffy with a cold look, "Frankly, Elizabeth, I could care less about anything that comes from your mouth; you are dead to me for releasing the evil known as Angelus, so let the names, faces and last moments of each of his victims keep you awake at night, Slayer."  
  
She gaped at the young man who had been her best guy friend since her first day in Sunnydale, the young man who had promised to interrogate her little sister's first date to the fullest of the law's extent ... the same young man who had, just over a week before threatened to kill her in front of almost everyone she held near and dear to her heart. Tears welled up in her eyes as the meaning of his words sank in and she released the almost-recovered vampire, "You can't mean that."  
  
"Why not? You condemn me for doing my job and then try and forbid me to do it – I don't care what you have to say anymore, Elizabeth, because your feelings aren't a priority to me anymore." He looked over at Whistler, nodded, and then turned on his heel, the flat look vanishing form his face as the Slayer broke into heaving sobs, an anguished one taking it's place even as he passed Rupert Giles, who's face showed that he knew exactly what he had done and what he had just given up to do it as he walked out the door ... and possibly out of the Slayer's life forever.  
  
+++  
  
/Two days later – Daylight Cemetery, graves of Kendra McPhearson and Brittany Collins/  
  
Xander knelt between the two headstones, one carved for each of the girls whom had lost their lives in a senseless war – he hadn't known either one of them for very long, but he liked to fancy the possibility that maybe he could have been their friends, had circumstances been different. He was dressed in black again, instead of black combat gear, this time it was a suit and sunglasses as he laid down a single lily atop each headstone and silently begin to pray, something he hadn't done in years, "Heavenly Father, forgive them their sins and accept them into Your loving Embrace; Kendra was a beautiful woman who was called to destroy the evil soulless ones and Brittany was a lamb, innocent of any true crime save being in the wrong place at the wrong time. I pray You forgive them and I of our transgressions in the name of the Father, The Son, and of the Holy Spirit. Amen."  
  
"Well spoken, Alexander." The voice was that of Lex, but there was a gather of scents around him that made Xander look behind him to see a small collection of six others, dressed comfortably in robes, gowns, jeans and suits.  
  
"Lex." Xander stood and turned to greet them even as the rush of on-coming feet was heard; he saw Buffy leading the charge of the Scooby Gang, but then turned his attention back to Lex, "What is my next assignment?"  
  
"Your assignment is to travel to Boston, Massachusetts, meet with the newly- Called Slayer Faith Williams and help guide her with the help of her Watcher Lynda Price. Your educational record for the remainder of the year have been ... taken care of, so there is no need to worry about that."  
  
"He's not leaving to anywhere for any reason." Buffy's tone was demanding, as she had no idea whom Xander walk talking to.  
  
"He goes where we order him to go, Slayer Summers," one of the beings, a woman dressed in a gown, said quietly and with an air of wisdom. "He is our ... insurance policy, if you will, and his presence with the new Slayer is necessary."  
  
"Like hell it is," Buffy ground out at the figure.  
  
"Buffy, do you have any idea who these people are?" Giles' worried look at his charge made her slightly curious and he went on, "These are the corporeal forms of The Powers That Be, Buffy. They are, in essence, Xander's bosses."  
  
"Correction, Mister Giles," Lex said. "I alone order Xander; the others are here to explain, in broad terms, what his mission is with us."  
  
"Mister Giles, what in the world is going on here?" Joyce and Dawn Summers stood behind the Scooby Gang, along with Jenny Calendar, Cordelia and Amy, each of them also dressed in the colors of mourning.  
  
Giles sighed and began his 'The world is older than you believe' speech as Buffy started to walk to Xander, "Xander, you can't leave m ... us."  
  
"And the reason for that is precisely what, Buffy?"  
  
She took a breath an let it out slowly, "Look, I'm sorry I reacted like I reacted, and I wish I could take it back, but I can't. I just ... want us to be friends again."  
  
Xander looked at her, unsure for a second before a cold, indifferent mask slipped over his features, "And then what, Slayer? Things go along swimmingly for a few months until you relegate me back into the 'Ignore Him, He's Powerless' category and start screwing another vampire?" He heard a gasp from Joyce at this but plowed on, "Be advised, Summers, you fucked up big time and all you want to do is forget it ever happed, but those two right there," he pointed to the two fresh graves, "are proof of your mistake."  
  
"Brittany's death wasn't my fault!"  
  
"Where were you when she was killed – Sunday after Thanksgiving?"  
  
"At the Bronze ... with ... Angel."  
  
"Precisely." The word was snapped out like a bullet spit out of a gun, "If you had been doing your fucking job then maybe I wouldn't have had to save her, explain to her what was going on and then she would not have been leaving my place where she was captured by Drusilla. Kendra's death is partially my fault – I had the bad judgment to bring you back to life in the Master's Lair in hops that you'd notice me, but seeing as someone would have to be undead to make time with you, it's a lost cause there." Xander's voice was level even as Buffy's tears flooded her cheeks, but inside anyone who was looking at him could tell he was killing himself to say the words, "Now, I have a job to do in Boston. Maybe we'll see each other again, maybe not." He walked off from the crying Slayer, pausing long enough to hug a stunned Willow, Joyce and Dawn, slipping the last of the three a slip of paper, and walked out of the Cemetery even as the Seven Powers That Be stood there, waiting for things to calm down before they began to explain some of what was going on.  
  
OKAY, that's the end of this chapter – I know it seems that Buffy's character has been assassinated to hell and back, but trust me, she'll get over it and be better for it ... eventually.  
  
Xander isn't acting like normal because of both of the spirits, the increased burden of responsibility for a better timeline and, quite frankly, he's tired of wearing the mask of 'The Fool' for everybody.  
  
I know I've introduced character and places from AtS, but some of them will probably come back later if I decide to make a sequel to this story.  
  
The 'Random Elemental' Bullets idea I got from a friend of mine who plays D&D religiously – thanks Mike, The Wandering Monk. They cost so much because each box is enspelled separately – there is a limit to how many bullets you can bless with one spell, so several must be done and the components, apparently, aren't cheap.  
  
OH, and thanks to Seige and 'Fever' for translating "Bas&*^$ son of a goat".  
  
New Poll : WHO SHOULD PLAY LYNDA PRICE, FAITH'S WATCHER: Amanda Tapping (Maj. Sam Carter from Stargate SG-1), Traci Lords (former porn star and author – let me justify this by saying that she's cleaned up rather nicely, so no flames about this, please), Julie Andrews (Mary Friggin' Poppins!), Loretta Switt (Maj. Margarette Houllihan from MASH the series) or Lucy Lawless (if you don't know who she played, GO FORTH FROM THIS PLACE IN SHAME!)  
  
No flames, please; constructive criticism only. AR. 


	4. Gotta Have Faith

Setting Things Right – Disclaimers in Chapter 1 (I'm lazy.)  
  
AN: I received an e-mail that I would like to respond to first and foremost; I realize that Xander has blood on his hand and, at the end of the last chapter, it looked as if he blithely laid all of Angelus' victims at her feet while his hands were clean. That simply isn't true. In this chapter you will see just how much his Killing of Ethan Rayne, the Death of Kendra in his arms and even Brittany Collins' deaths have effected him – he won't turn to the bottle per se, he will deal with this somewhat constructively. Now it was also said that while Xander put all the blame on Buffy, she could have tagged him as having tried to rape her in S1 as the Hyena – I am not sure I agree with that because while, and I forget where I heard it, he admits that he wanted her, but that it took the Hyena Spirit to bring those desires and darkness out of his mind to make him do that. He'll cop to doing a lot of bad things in chapter, but it will go to the very old saying, 'That which does not kill us only makes us stronger'.  
  
AN2: To Jwolf, Yes, it seems that Xander has burned/nuked his bridges in Sunnydale with some of the group, but he is merely clearing away any old conceptions of just who he is and what he is capable of in one broad stroke – just like in farming, sometimes you have to burn the fields before you can grow new things (I do it every year when we harvest our corn crop – it puts something back into the soil). Secondly, 'The Fool', yes, it is gone, but 'The Jester' will make a comeback once he has dealt with some of his emotional baggage ... or Dawn get to him, which ever comes first (haven't decided yet, as of this point). Third, I realize now that I killed off Ms. Collins WAY too early, but I can't bring her back – she COULD have been evolved into a better character, but she served her purpose to make Xander realize that even though you save someone in the 'now', you can't always save them down the road (she lived less than twenty meters away, the way the crow flies, and was snatched/turned by Drusilla before she got there – sort of an ironic way to show my point). He couldn't pull the trigger because, well, I'll explain it later in the chapter (it's cruel to do this, I know!).  
  
AN3: As I sit here typing this, I find myself to be in a bit of a quandary – from the replies I have gotten, I can tell that I am going too fast on some parts of the story (like Brittany's introduction and demise); I apologize for that, namely because she was to be the OFC choice for Xander, but as I developed her character in my mind and on paper, she just didn't work out – I had her pegged as a Psych student who's mentor happened to be Maggie Walsh, but if Brittany got involved with Xander, then somehow I'd have to write Maggie into the story (even if it was to just putting a bullet, stray or intentional, into her skull). As much as I may despise what happened in S7, S4 had only two redeeming factors – Tara and Dawn's introductions. The whole Initiative plotline sucked – hard – so I'm not going to pay it any heed from this point out.  
  
AN4: And the Winner of the 'Who Is Faith's Watcher' Poll is ... read the chapter and find out. I can say, though, she is not a former porn star and is not now, nor has she ever been, a member of SG-1.  
  
Things Coming To An Emotional Head –or- Gotta Have Faith  
  
It had been less than a day since Xander had basically nuked almost every bridge he had ever built in Sunnydale – he realized that now after stepping off of the plane in Boston; eventually he would have to apologize to Buffy, and he would, but before that he would have to do something that was infinitely harder. It had started small, just after the Halloween spell had ended and before he had gone to school; he had found himself looking around his condo and had found a well-stocked liquor cabinet – his first impulse was to clean it out by pouring every damned drop down the drain, but then something hit him, almost as if it was a way to not only prove to himself that he wasn't his father's child, but that he was in control. Taking one of the bottles of alcohol, an aged whiskey in this case, he grabbed a shot glass and went to the kitchen table, opening the bottle as he went; and poured a shot and then setting the bottle down, he sat down himself and reached out to the shot glass. In a symbolic gesture, he gave it the bird and then pushed it away, leaning back into his chair and stared at it as if in it's depths were held the answers to all of his problems. He had done that every night since then and, at the end of it, poured the drink back into the bottle, never spilling, drinking or otherwise touching a drop.  
  
Ever since Lex had charged him with what basically amounted to saving an entire world from a timeline that really and truly blew the big one, Xander had felt as if someone had put a huge weight on his shoulders; he was the one who was ultimately responsible for what happened – if he hesitated to pull the trigger or went against his orders, the world could have been subject to untold suffering. It was a wakeup call to him – he usually played things off as a joke, wearing the mask of the Fool to hid what he was really feeling, but now that wasn't an option and he had to face up to the fact that he had to grow the hell up. He had to remember everything that had happened the first time around and to keep some of it from happening again, no matter how impossible the odds or difficult the challenge – it was at that point that he realized just how easy it was for Faith to slip into the darkness the last time around.  
  
Given a job, a destiny, like that was something that nobody was truly ever prepared for – sure, Xander had seen a lot of bad things as a Scooby and even from within his own home life, but nothing, not even the massive amount of eye-opening that even the Soldier had given to him as to the realities of war, death and commitment, had or could ever prepare him for the feeling of guilt he had felt when he saw Brittany as a vampire or the pure anguish he had experienced as he held Kendra in his arms when she expired, helpless to do anything because of the fact that it had to happen. All of those things, combined with the, albeit reluctant, guilt that had come along with the death of Ethan Rayne, had made him look into the mirror the morning he had gone to visit the graves of Kendra and Brittany and question just who the sorry son of a bitch looking back at him was. The eyes that looked back at him were dark, haunted, and completely foreign to Xander; quite frankly, it scared the hell out of him and he chose in that moment to change just who it was that he happened to be ... after one last performance. Hurting Buffy like that, unfortunately, was necessary for her to realize that she wasn't the only kid on the block and that she needed to take responsibility for her actions – which happened to be a piece of advice Xander needed to take himself.  
  
"Hello, Mister Harris." The voice, which held a slight English intonation, startled him out of his internal reverie, making him start slightly, before he looked around to see who had spoken. His eyes fell upon the only other person besides him standing at the terminal at the ungodly hour of 2:30 am, and quite frankly he was at a loss as to what he should do – she was gorgeous in an athletic way, and he could tell that she was athletic from the way her business pantsuit fit her. Her dark brown hair hung down past her shoulders, devoid of any curl, her skin was somewhat creamy in texture but held a slightly weathered look that came from being outside and playing hard; her eyes, though, caught his attention immediately – they were at once both cold as ice in their grey color, but they also held a warmth to them that was only apparent to those who knew what they were looking for. While he was sure that she had a good fifteen years on him, Xander couldn't deny that Lynda Price was a stone cold fox of a Watcher.  
  
"Ms. Price, I presume?" He unconsciously straightened his jacket and tie while shifting his AWOL bag from his right hand to his left, extending the now-vacant appendage forwards at her affirming nod, "A pleasure to meet you."  
  
Linda took his hand in a firm, but feminine grip, "Likewise, though I do have to admit that when Rupert said you were young, I envisioned someone in their early to mid-twenties, not their mid-teens." Her voice was slightly colored with concern, but that turned into a sardonic smile as she continued, "But then again he also said that you could help my young charge in her training; using a teenager to speak to a teenager, as it were."  
  
He smiled slightly, "Sometimes I feel as if I'm much older than I look, Ms. Price."  
  
"Lynda, please." She motioned for him to follow her and they made their way to the baggage claim trundle.  
  
"Only if you call me ... Alex. 'Mr. Harris' makes me look for my drunk of a father and, quite frankly, I loathe the fact that he an I share any DNA in common." They reached the baggage claim and Xander immediately grabbed his OD green duffle, a garment bag that held a few suits (a suggestion of Giles'), and then one last shoulder bag before they were off – he was unable to bring his weapons along on the trip for obvious reasons, permits or not, so he had arranged for them to be shipped to him overland in Boston.  
  
"I understand perfectly. I do have a question for you, if you do not mind answering it." They made their way out of the airport, which was quite a long walk considering his terminal was one of the furthest from the proverbial front door.  
  
"That being?"  
  
"Why is it that the Council has you being listed as being someone with no powers or apparent training? Mister Giles has already told me of some of your ... how should I say ... missions so far, and the level of skill you have shown is exemplary at worst."  
  
"How so?"  
  
"You have single-handedly eliminated both William the Bloody and his sire, Drusilla with a new type of bullet that my superiors would like to examine, you have been confirmed to have had contact with not only one, but all seven entities known as The Powers That Be and seem to be working for them."  
  
"First of all I work for only one of them, and he came to me; secondly the bullet I used on Spike was part of a Chaos spell while the one I used on Dru I got from another source after hearing about it on the street – works okay, but generally is only useful on vamps due to the random nature of the magic used on it. Lastly, just because someone doesn't have any overt powers doesn't make them, or me, any less dangerous than a Slayer where demons are concerned – sure, we may lack the speed, strength and all of that, but people like us can be particularly inventive when we need to be."  
  
"Well spoken, Alex. Now, tell me what it is you intend to do with Faith to help her be a better Slayer."  
  
This was the question that Xander had been dreading, and even after the only three hour flight, he still wasn't prepared for it, "To tell you the truth, Lynda, I don't have the first clue what I'm going to do with Faith outside of just trying to be her friend. I have a pretty good idea what her home life has been like – I speak from experience," he stopped and looked her in the eyes to make sure she got the fact he was trying to get across to her, "when I say that child abuse isn't a pretty thing and sexual abuse is even worse."  
  
Xander wasn't sure what was showing in his eyes at that point, but from the stricken look that Lynda Price wore, he had gotten the point across to her and she nodded, "Of course, Alex, I understand perfectly well what you are going to try and do, but I need you to be sure you understand what it is that I am trying to tell you – Faith has just started to open up to me and now you are going to be moving into our home with us. Don't expect her to welcome you with open arms."  
  
"I don't expect that at all – if anything I expect suspicion, anger and even a touch of resentment from her." They started walking along again and it was then that he spoke, "But I also want to tell her how her predecessor met her end."  
  
"Yes, she was killed by Drusilla via exsanguination induced from a cut throat."  
  
"Yes, but that was not what I meant. I got there just after it happened and I held Kendra in my arms as she died." He heard her gasp and looked over at her only to see a pale face and huge eyes, "There wasn't a thing that I could do for Kendra, Lynda, but I will be damned straight to the deepest pits of Hell before I let Faith go without a fight – in fact, if I have my way, she will be the first active Slayer to reach retirement in just over six hundred years."  
  
Lynda looked at him incredulously, "So you intend to be with her every step of the way until her twenty fifth birthday, when the Essence is passed on?"  
  
He nodded, "If needs be. You are going to find out that I am one stubborn son of a bitch, Lynda, just as much as Faith and then some. She is not going to like some of the things I am going to do, and neither are you for that matter, but all of them will culminate into one goal – keeping her alive." That said, he adjusted his bags in hand and they left the airport for the parking garage and Lynda's car ... a cheery red '69 Mustang that had been fully restored.  
  
+++  
  
Faith was still awake when they got the two-and-a-half story house on the outskirts of a residential neighborhood, dressed in her habitual leather pants and halter top, and she seemed to be less than impressed by what she saw in Xander ... and made her opinions known, "How in the hell is he going to help us, Lynda? He barely looks old enough to drive."  
  
"Looks can be deceiving, Faith," Lynda admonished. "He's killed two of the four most feared vampires that ever crossed Europe within the past two months, had a direct hand in killing the third, was ordered to spare the fourth by The Powers That Be and that has happened without any powers or magic of his own."  
  
"Then how'd he do it? Get the vamps to dust themselves?" Her tone was snide but under it was more than a little curiosity.  
  
"Superior firepower. I'm Alexander Harris. Call me Xander or Alex." He extended his hand and wasn't at all surprised that she flatly ignored it.  
  
"Guns don't kill vampires, Lex, and even I know that."  
  
"You know, you are absolutely right. I could hit a vampire with a gun all day and all night long and that would only piss them off royally; if shot them with the ammunition I use, however, they either fry, shatter, or burn from the magical rounds or are disabled from the blessed hollow points I use in my SOCOM and UMP." For a split second after he spoke, Xander could swear he saw a look of respect, but soon that was washed away with her sneer.  
  
"And what are these things, 'SOCOM' and 'UMP'?"  
  
"Heckler and Koch Mk 23 Mod 0 United States Special Operations Command (USSOCOM) .45 caliber pistol equipped with a Laser Aiming Module and a flash/sound suppressor; Ultimate Machine Pistol also fires .45 caliber in single, three-round or full auto off of a thirty round mag, it's suppressed and has a night vision scope that I've had overlaid with thermal imaging – anything that shows up as cold is a vamp." He grins somewhat cheekily at the both of them as their jaws drop, "And if the two of you are good girls, I'll even teach you how to use them properly." {AN: I don't know what the 'U' in UMP stands for, so I'm guessing. AR}  
  
"And are you licensed to carry them, Alexander?" Lynda's words were somewhat icy at first, but that ice melted away when produced his carry licenses for both weapons, "Oh."  
  
Faith, however, had a few choice words added to her question, "How in the hell did you get those bastards? And can I have one?"  
  
"Well, you'll have first be trained in their use and then get a carry permit, then ask Linda to get them for you, but as to how I got them ... I broke into the Sunnydale Military Base and stole them." He shrugged as they gaped yet again, picking up his bags, "Good evening, and ladies, I'll see you tomorrow morning for our workout session at 0630." With a smile at his parting shot, Xander walked up the stairs to the room that Lynda had told him was his to use.  
  
+++  
  
Xander slept little that night – first off it was a new bed and a new place, so he wasn't comfortable, but his room was next to Faith's and she had been subject to what had sounded to be one hell of a nightmare; it got so bad at once that Xander walked in to see Lynda at her bedside, trying to hold the young Slayer in place and failing. Xander stepped in at that point, using his own enhanced strength to slightly suppress the struggles of the Slayer and draw her into a firm but chase hug that made Lynda arch an eyebrow at him; he said nothing back to her for a few minutes until Faith's struggles had subsided and she slept soundly in his embrace, her hair covering her face and muscles relaxing from their tensed stated gradually as she fell into deeper levels of sleep – so deep that Lynda had to help him put her back into her bed before he could go back to his own for a few winks. A look between him and the Watcher clearly stated that the event that had just happened most certainly would never be spoke about in front of Faith unless she brought it up; with that and a nod, they went to their separate room and to bed.  
  
He finally gave up on the idea of sleep about four am, hauling himself out of the bed and into a pair of sweatpants, a tank top and his sneakers; it was too cold to be running, after all, Boston was a lot further north than Sunnydale and it was winter, so he'd have to settle for a harder version of his normal morning calisthenics, a habit he had gotten into because of the memories of both the Soldier and the urges of the Hyena to be in optimal shape for hunting.  
  
On his way down to the empty den of the house, he looked in on Faith and saw that Lynda was in the bed with the Slayer, holding the young woman in a motherly way, and both were fast asleep; Xander smiled and remembered what Faith had said about Lynda in the original timeline, how she had been the closest thing to a real mother she could ever remember or wanting. For a split second, as he watched, he was subject to abject jealousy at what the Slayer had in Lynda, but then smothered that feeling with the cold fact that Joyce had filled the same void in his life in both timelines – he'd miss her most of all while in Boston, and Dawn was right behind her, though he'd also given dawn his e-mail address before leaving, so they could at least chat.  
  
Making his way down to the den, which was where the training seemed to take place, Xander stretched out his limbs and body for several minutes before dropping to the ground and pressing out one hundred pushups, alternating between one-handed, two-handed and with which hand he used, then one hundred crunches, followed by various leg stretches and finally ending his 'normal' session with as many chin and pull ups as she could handle (about fifty a piece, but those numbers were starting to head north). Moving to the center of the room, he shut out all thought from his mind, taking up a stance with legs apart and arms at his side in a 'ready' motion, and then slowly began to move in the patters of Tai Chi; it gave his body a work out and let him work on his inner balance while leaving his mind open to ponder all of the things that were bothering him – on this particular morning it was the remnants of Ethan Rayne's dead he was coming to terms with.  
  
The man had worshiped Chaos because he liked to cause just that, chaos, wherever he went and, by Giles' stories, was a general pain in the ass because he wanted to be; at the time Xander had felt as if he were in the right in shooting Rayne, but the more than he thought about it he should have let the Chaos Mage meet one of his own creations (Xander himself didn't count because the Soldier wasn't in charge at the time) – that would have been a more fitting end for the Briton, but hindsight was always 20/20.  
  
"Nice form." Xander didn't jump at the voice of Lynda Price, but he also did not stop going through the motions of his exercise.  
  
"Thank you. Care to join me?" He got no verbal response but could hear the woman walk over to his other side and could feel the woman mimicking the movements his made, "How's Faith?"  
  
"Still asleep; her nightmares are coming less frequently now – last night was the first one she'd had in a few nights. This brings up the question of just how you subdued her – she's stronger than vampires by a margin of very little, so you should not have been able to hold her at all."  
  
Xander felt a smart-ass smirk come to his face and forced himself to keep his response at, "I'm stronger than I look, Lynda."  
  
"And how strong is that?"  
  
"About five times the human norm when I go all out; I can keep my strength at normal levels with only a little thought, but when I get excited ... well, things happen." He could feel the beads of sweat dripping from his neck and down his torso, which were then absorbed by his tank top, "My senses are also a bit better than most people's; I can push them further if I wanted to, but truth be told they drive me up the wall enough as it is."  
  
"And you came by these abilities how, exactly?"  
  
"Animal Possession – Hyena if you wish to be precise about it." He didn't need to look at her to see, hear and feel the wince she involuntarily gave, which made him chuckle, "It was ... liberating, yet utterly terrifying at the same time. I guess that is how the Slayer feels at all times, sans the homicidal tendencies to humans and swine."  
  
"Swine?"  
  
"School mascot was named Herbert; needed a little salt, garlic and barbeque sauce, but he went down easily enough." Xander chuckled again as he could feel the grimace she gave, but then sobered, "Being Alpha had it's perks too."  
  
"You were the leader?" Lynda didn't sound surprised for some odd reason, but he let that pass as she spoke again, "What do you intend to do about school this semester, Alex? I will not have a freeloader here under any circumstances."  
  
"It's up to my boss, but I figure he'll make me attend if for no other reason than to make sure Faith is okay." He stopped his movements in the same place and position he had started from when he started nearly an hour before, after a quick check of the clock, which read 6:15 am. Neither spoke as they filed off to the kitchen for coffee and the news paper, which made it's arrival with a thump at the front door nearly twenty minutes before, and sat in silence while awaiting the arrival of the dark-haired Slayer, whom could be heard upstairs moving towards he bathroom.  
  
Ten minutes later Faith showed up in her habitual leather pants and a t- shirt that had it's left sleeve missing, yawning and running her fingers through her still-damp hair before, like a great bird heading south for the winter, she turned towards the coffee pot and partook of the liquid fruit of the great bean {if you can't tell, I'm addicted to the drink myself. :P}. "Morning, Lynda. Hey, you."  
  
Xander kept his chuckle quiet while Lynda didn't, her somewhat throaty laugh rebounding in the kitchen for several seconds before she spoke, "So, Alex, what is on your itinerary today?"  
  
After a second or two of thought and a swallow of coffee, he spoke, "Unpack, scout the area and then find a post office or UPS place so I can get G-man to send me my equipment."  
  
"You left your 'equipment' there?" Faith asked with an arched brow and a smirk, "I thought all guys were kinda attached to their ... tools?"  
  
The last time around Xander probably would have choked on his coffee at that statement, just as Lynda was doing next to him, but as he was already somewhat used to Faith's double entendres he merely smirked, "Okay, I kept some of my stuff with me, but all of the projectile weaponry I left in Sunnydale with Giles."  
  
"Giles?"  
  
"Rupert Giles, Buffy's Watcher; he's cool, but, um, well, how do I put this nicely?"  
  
"Stuffy? Boring? Square?"  
  
"A touch on the overly British side."  
  
"Ah, all of the above." Faith and Xander said at the same time, and then both had to chuckle at that, but then just as quickly stopped at Lynda's arched look, "Present company excluded, of course."  
  
"Of course. Now, Alex, what other weaponry do you use when not using your firearms?"  
  
"Whatever I can get my hands on – swords, axes, staves, even the odd crossbow, but I prefer swords; less collateral damage, easier to hide in the long run, easier to maintain and more terrifying." At their combined look, he went on, "In every movie in this day and age you see someone getting shot and going on, but they get stabbed or disemboweled with a sword and they stay down, saying nothing on the beheading bit." He took a sip of his coffee and couldn't resist anymore, "I take it you prefer either the sword, whip or the chakram, right?"  
  
Faith snickered into her coffee at that while Lynda looked at him primly, "Are you implying something, Alexander?"  
  
"Nothing, just that you do bear more than a passing resemblance to her, Lynda." He looked at Faith and they both held on for a few more seconds before they let out a full-blown war cry/yell/yipping (I'm not sure what it really is – I've seen it described as all three) that lasted for several seconds before they both collapsed in laughter at Lynda's slightly affronted look.  
  
"Bloody American teenagers." This only made Xander and Faith laugh harder as the Briton finished off her coffee and then, out of spite, finished off what was left in the cups of both howling teens.  
  
+++  
  
As it happened, Xander held off on unpacking until that evening; he'd called Giles from a pay phone about noon and arranged the transport before gong off to find a good computer store – he'd prefer to have a laptop, but with the sheer amount of work that he had to do across the phone lines, he'd have to get an entire PC desktop unit, which wasn't going to be cheap, but his investments in the market had been paying off so he wasn't hurting for cash.  
  
The first place he had walked into was selling crap, just like the second and third places that he walked into, but the fourth place, named 'Whiz Kids', would have had Willow on her hands and knees, bowing and genuflecting at the hardware, promising them her first born; if it was capable of being used on the computer, the word on the street said they had it and were capable of installing it in short order and, as a bonus, they even had decent prices.  
  
"Can I help ya, kid?" The speaker was in her late twenties, maybe her early thirties, and instantly reminded Xander of Jenny Calendar with her Romany features ... only with a pierced eyebrow, three holes in each ear, shocking pink (!) hair cropped to two inches all around and matching eye shadow.  
  
"Yeah, I need a system that can handle Internet, games, scanning and translation – lots of RAM, HD space and options, too."  
  
"Ya want my first born too?" Her replay was sarcastic but friendly, which made him look her up and down after leaning over the counter.  
  
"If the kid gets my sense of humor, sure." They shared a chuckle, as she obviously wasn't offended, and she led him over to some half-completed systems, explaining what each was capable of, what was in each, and how flexible each system was. "So, see anything you like?"  
  
He flashed her a half grin, "That's a leading question, Miss," he glanced down at her nametag, "Diane, but I'll the one you called 'My Wet Dream'."  
  
They both chuckled at the name for a second before she went over to the register, "This won't be cheap, kid; we expect half down up front and the rest on completion, which should take a few days."  
  
"Not a problem, Diane." He flipped out a stack of bills and counted off half of the total she quoted him, ignoring the shocked glance she gave him as he passed them over and stuck his wallet away, "You have a good day, alright?"  
  
"Sure, but I've never seen ya around here before, kid, and I don't know your name; I've lived here my whole life and I'm good with faces."  
  
He stuck out his hand, "Alexander Harris, previously of Sunnydale, California and I just got into Boston last night; call me Alex or Xander."  
  
"Nice to meet ya – Diane Styles, born and raised here in Boston. Nickel's worth of free advice to ya, kid, is to get in after dark in these parts – we've had a problem with wild animal attacks and gangs lately."  
  
Xander felt his stomach drop into his boots as he instinctively sharpened his senses – he could smell the computer equipment and even the burnt smell of fried circuit boards, but he also picked up the distinct scent that was coming from Diane, which was a mixture of the computers she worked around, built and fixed, and a slight hint of honey intermingled with heather; it was so much like Jenny Calendar's that it was driving Xander into full Hyena-mating mode, "I'll keep that in mind. Now tell me, because this is getting to me – do you know anyone by the name of Jenny Calendar ... or Janna Kalderash?"  
  
Diane's face paled significantly as she stepped back and stammered, "H-how do you know that name?"  
  
He held up his hands in a gesture that he hoped was calming, "Chill out, Diane; she's the computer teacher at my old school in Sunny D, and as to how I know the other name, you'll have to ask her. I mean you nor your Clan any harm – I'm here to help out someone else in the same fight as you."  
  
She looked around and finally, after seeing that nobody was around, she walked to the front door and locked it, flipping the sign to 'Closed – duh'; when she walked back to him, she passed by and muttered, "Follow me." He shrugged and followed her, his hand inside of his jacket pockets and his right resting on the SOCOM he had hidden in the special pocket he had painstakingly sewn into it so he could carry it in plain sight with the suppressor on.  
  
She led him to a back room and, before he could enter, she reached over and pulled out a gun from under a stack of magazines, "Open the jacket, slowly, and then turn around once with it open."  
  
"Sure, but does this mean we can't be friends?" He complied, his hands never leaving his pockets, and then removed his hands slowly to remove the coat – if she had wanted to shoot him she would have done so by now.  
  
"Maybe we can, maybe we can't – if I don't like what my cousin has to say, you'll never find out because I'll put a bullet into you right here and now." She never put the gun away, merely lowering it to add several components together from several jars and then lighting them up with a match while muttering several words. The concoction detonated softly and sent up a small cloud of smoke in a column before a ball of light rose from the small bowl – the ball of light continued to rise until it was at eye- level and then expanded to a square about three feet square and fuzzed over with 'snow' before clearing to reveal the face of Jenny Calendar, "Hey, cuz, how's tricks?"  
  
"Diane, how many times do I have to tell you to not call me ... Xander? Is that you?" The look of shock on her face was almost comical, but Xander could see the shock being replaced by a look of relief quickly.  
  
"Last time I check, Jenny. You know, if it weren't for the hair color, piercings and slight accent difference, I'd swear that you and Diane were twins – Hell, you two could make a killing with the right modeling agency."  
  
"Compliments like that won't get you anything from me, Xander, but with Diane I'm sure it will get you into positions you never dreamed existed." Jenny's somewhat saucy smile starkly contrasted the slightly overdone look of horror on Diane's face after she squawked.  
  
"Jennifer, are you implying that I would ravish this tall, handsome and virile young man here behind me while you would not?"  
  
The answering smirk on Jenny's face made Xander feel a slight blush creep up into his cheeks, "I can't Diane – I'm here in California while both you and he are in same room." She sighed in mock tragedy, "Oh, whatever shall I do?"  
  
All three were silent for a moment before they broke into laughter, which lasted a minute before Jenny calmed down and looked over at Xander, "You do realize that when you are hooked up to the Internet and check your e-mail account, you are more than likely going to have more than a few rather pointed messages from Dawn, I hope."  
  
"I'd expect nothing less from a woman with the last name of 'Summers', Jenny. How are they?"  
  
"Difficult, but that is nothing new; Dawn is constantly shooting her sister death glares, Willow is doing her best to keep Buffy from flooding her house, Joyce is slowly getting the real idea of just really happens in Sunnydale after dark, Rupert hasn't slept in a week and Buffy herself hasn't stopped crying after your rather magnificent final performance." The tone in her voice told Xander that she knew exactly what he had been trying to do ... and that he knew what the cost would be.  
  
"Just as I figured." He sighed, "Damnit, I hate this; I try to do a job simply and it gets exponentially harder with each day."  
  
"One of the burdens of being Xander Harris." Jenny's slightly smug tone made him glare at her, but then her half-smirk dropped, "How are you doing, really?"  
  
"I've been better, Jenny, but I'm working through it slowly. Hell, today was the first day I actually laughed for real since before Halloween; it felt good, Jenny, it really did."  
  
"Good." She looked over at Diane, who looked somewhat bored, "Get him a loaner so he can contact me at my e-mail and I can give him a full heads up on just what is going on around here and he can answer some of Dawn's questions/rants/pleadings."  
  
Diane bowed subserviently, her voice dripping with sarcasm, "Yes, Mistress. Would Mistress like a foot rub as well? Perhaps my kidney?"  
  
"You can keep your kidney, but my foot rub I am going to bank for a ... future date," she said with a slightly enigmatic smile, "with a certain person whom shall remain nameless." Jenny looked back over at Xander, "Be good, Xander."  
  
"Do I have to, Jenny?"  
  
"Yes."  
  
"Why?"  
  
"Because you trust my judgment." Those said, she winked at him and terminated the spell from her end, making the ball of light turn into a ball of smoke and evaporate into thin air.  
  
Diane snorted, "Jenny always one for theatrics. I'd swear that she was part drama queen if I didn't know her so well."  
  
Xander smiled, "Hey, I like her well enough; let her keep her inner drama queen a secret." He joined her at the table where she was packing laptop components into a box, "So, this is the loaner?"  
  
"Yeah, top of the line everything that you will return when you come to collect your real computer." She passed the box over after filling it, smiling, "Adios, cutie ... unless you don't have anywhere to be for a little while."  
  
Xander swallowed slightly, doing his best not to do anything too stupid, "Diane, as much as I would love to stay here, I am afraid that dinner waits for no person around the household. Plus, it's lasagna night from what I have been told, and it is rather good."  
  
She sighed, "Damn. It's a shame you're hungry for lasagna because I'm sure that I could find you something to eat around here."  
  
Xander did his absolute best to not react to that statement; being around Faith too much made him look for innuendos that just didn't exist, "I gotta go, Diane. Bye."  
  
Had Xander stayed around for a few more seconds, he would have seen Diane pout, "I must be losing my touch."  
  
AN: Okay, I'm cutting this chapter off here because I have to re-think several ideas of mine that just are not working out as far as where to go from here. R & R, please, no flames, thank you.  
  
In case you didn't figure it out, Lucy Lawless won the poll and that's because I eventually had to flip a coin the tally between her and Julie Andrews was so close. I think she'll survive this next chapter and go to Sunnydale with Faith and Xander; she and Giles could hook up, leaving Jenny open for someone else.  
  
I know things are a little OCC with the characters of Jenny and Faith, but remember that by this point Jenny was dead and Faith changed a lot when Lynda died, so I'm taking a writer's privilege with this subject.  
  
NEW POLL: Whom should it be: a Gabby, Joxer, Ares, and/or Aphrodite look- alike to show up in the next chapter as a friend of, acquaintance of, pain- in-the-ass-of, or headache-inducer/meddler of Lynda's? 


	5. EMails Home or Starting The Rebuilding P...

Setting Things Right  
  
Author: Anime Ronin  
  
Disclaimer: I own nothing, so deal with it.  
  
AN: I would like to respond to a review / response that was sent to me by Queen Boadiciea and therefore I am posting it below so that I can make a point-by-point rebuttal:  
  
From: Queen Boadicea  
  
I've been thinking a lot about this story since I read the previous chapters. (You may flatter yourself that it had that profound effect.) I've come up with even more disturbing conclusions than I did then.  
  
Xander has basically become a kind of paid assassin for these so-called Powers without seeming to question the path they've set him on. They've incorporated a vicious Hyena spirit (one that originally resulted in the death of a pig and an innocent human being even though he wasn't guilty of murder--yet) and a soldier persona inflicted by dark magic into his mind. You'd think he'd be upset and afraid at such a tactic but he never questions it.  
  
He allows a Slayer to die on their say-so because Kendra isn't the one that fits into their long-range plans. Then they send him on a mission to get the Slayer they really wanted--Faith. Basically, he lets a vampire murder Kendra then goes off to mold Faith into the Slayer they desire. This sounds frighteningly like what the Council of Watchers would do if a Slayer failed to make the grade. (Remember the Cruciamentum?)  
  
I was disgusted at the idea of Buffy weeping over a man who tried to rape her and then spoke coldly of killing her if she ever stepped out of line. If I were she, I'd start stocking up on guns, getting some serious magic mojo behind me and taking steps to defend myself just in case one Alexander Lavelle Harris takes it in his mind to come traipsing back into Sunnydale.  
  
I also thought it rather hypocritical of Xander to threaten to kill Buffy if she got his friends killed. He leaves town directly afterwards! How concerned about them can he be if he just runs out without a word and doesn't bother to contact anybody except Jenny, the person he had the least contact with?  
  
I'm beginning to hate your portrayal of Xander Harris. I hope some humanity returns to him in future chapters.  
  
First of all, I thank you for this reply, QB – I realize that it's not personal, but an honest rendition of your thoughts in black and white. Now, as to Xander basically being an assassin for TPTB, in a way you are right – he has been given all of the perks of his past two possession to basically do their dirty work in hopes that a new future can be made out of what was to be a really crappy one. To that end, he is forced to do things that he would normally never do unless given no other choices (Killing Ethan Rayne, allowing Kendra to die, etc.), he's certainly not happy about what is happening, but he must deal because he has a job to do that he has been selected for – he is, in essence, a soldier given a mission with objectives that he may not personally like, but he must complete for the greater good (in this case, a better future). I know it sounds like a canned response, but it's the best I can give you at this point without having written any other parts of this story.  
  
As to his allowing Kendra to die, I originally wrote the story to have him somehow save her life, but then there would be three slayers (ala the story Three Slayers) and logistically that would be a nightmare for everyone involved. It is not that she did not make some kind of mystical 'grade', as you put it, but rather she was just whoever was next in line for the Slayer Essence and it had to go to Faith. Don't get me wrong, I liked Kendra and the possibilities that she put forth, but even if she had been 'liberated' from the Council's way of thinking, she would have been a developing character for the rest of the story where as Faith already has several key personality traits in place and she's not in a scared state from having Lynda die and Kakistos terrorize her. Like it or not, that is the way I see things – sorry.  
  
No, he is not going to mold Faith into the TPTB's dream for a Slayer – he is going to show her that she is not as alone as she thinks she is and help her removes some of the darkness from her soul that drove her to kill and join the Darkness. In essence, he is hopefully making it to where if something DOES happen, like her killing Finch this time around, she will be able to at least talk to somebody and realize that, yes, it was an accident and then move on. Accidents happen in war and sometimes some innocent civilians get caught in the crossfire – people try to plan for this and prevent it, but it's a harsh reality of combat that was explained to me by a great uncle who served as a grunt in Vietnam in '68 – '69.  
  
Next, the whole tearing into Buffy by Xander at the end of C 3 was terribly overdone – I see that now and am sorry for publishing it that way; yes, I realize that he went WAY over the top, or I did in writing it (however you want to slice it), and that will, well, may change later in the form of an apology. I know for a fact that if I had been torn into like that, the person may eventually earn my trust again, but I'd remember how they hurt me. (I may forgive, but I sure as hell don't forget.)  
  
Oh, and he didn't contact Jenny, Diane did because of his reference to the clan Kalderash – she knows where he is and he's currently too busy trying to figure out just what the hell to do to start mending fences (which will happen at some point in this next chapter). That process will be a slow and sometimes painful one, but it will eventually come to a head in a few chapters when he, Faith and possibly Lynda and the Ares/Joxer/Autolycus/Aphrodite (those are the responses I've gotten so far as of this writing – is everyone so tired of the Gabby character?) look- alike come back to Sunnydale for what would be the start of S3.  
  
As for your declaration of starting to hate my portrayal of Xander, I respect that; I'd be foolish to think that everybody would love the previous two chapters, or the one that I have planned on writing this time, but I hope that somehow I am able to change that, QB. As for the restoration of humanity, well, he's still human, and he will have a choice in the near future as to what he is; a man with his own mind and conscience to live with or a tool of The Powers That Be. Oh, and thank you for the review on my other fic, The Cleaners, and the lines for Xander from The Shadow crossover didn't come from the movie – I listened to the original radio show and got said lines ... and these were before the second world war.  
  
Setting Things Right Chapter 5: E-Mails Home – or – Starting The Rebuilding Process  
  
{AN: This chapter will be short; think of it as a way to start rebuilding Xander to what he once was.}  
  
Xander looked at the blank e-mail form on the computer screen in front of him; he had managed to find a local server in the area and got service that day, though he suspected that somebody higher up the food chain than him had something to do with that, and had managed to access his e-mail account. There was one piece from Jenny concerning a bit about the nature of his job, but the majority of the pieces were from the only other person who had his e-mail address; Dawn had sent no less than fifty e-mails to him in the past four days and while half of them were rants and raves questioning just how he could say mean things like that to Buffy, several were questions about why he had not told everyone about his 'job' with Lex and one was a simple question which had him stumped – "When are you coming home?"  
  
It took about five minutes of him looking at the blank for before he put his hands on the keyboard and began typing, "Hello, Dawn Patrol. I don't know when I'm coming home." He was going to leave it at that but an exasperated snort behind him made it clear that it would not be enough.  
  
"Surely you are not going to leave your response at that, Alex." Lynda had called Giles at some point during the day and had gotten the full story from him; he didn't have anything remotely resembling telepathy, but he could sense that she was less than pleased with his actions thus far.  
  
Sighing, he put his hands back on the keyboard and began typing again, "I have a job to do out here in Boston, Dawnie, and I can't say for sure when I'll be back, but what I can tell you is that ... I'm sorry. I should have told all of you what was going down, but I couldn't bring myself to do it; I was afraid. Part of me knows that what I am doing is somewhat necessary, but another part of me hates it – for want of a better term, I am an assassin. Whatever doesn't fit into the PTB's plans, I change – if it is a person, I neutralize them in a manner that they will not hinder the job any more, if it is an event, I try and alter some of the things within that event to make it a positive thing.  
  
"I've made a few decisions that I am not proud of, Dawnie, and a few more than still keep me awake at night, but I can't change ... okay, let me rephrase that. I CAN change a past, but I can't change who I really am anymore, Dawn – I am The Hyena, I am The Soldier, I am Xander and we have all be rolled into one person. I kill, I hunt, I track, I ... fix, situations and I cannot be second-guessing my actions – if what I am doing at any given time somehow endangers the timeline, Lex will call me or I will stop myself. Bye for now, Alex." He looked back over his shoulder, "Better?"  
  
"A trifle contrite, perhaps, bordering on the level of condescending, but I think that you are getting the point across." Lynda removed her button-up sweater and hung it atop a chair, "Now, are you going to explain the situation via e-mail to Willow, Buffy and the others?"  
  
"Slave driver." He hit the SEND button and pulled up a new form, addressing it to Willow, "Hey Wills, 'sme. Alright, by now I am pretty sure you've called me just about every name in the English language, the Hebrew language and a few others that I can only dream about, but let me tell you that in the past few days, I've definitely called myself worse. If you have not done this by now, though, please take this time to do so before reading on.  
  
...  
  
...  
  
...  
  
"Got that out of your system? Good, now here comes as much of an apology as you are going to get out of me at this point in time – WillowpleaseforgivemebecauseIamreallysorryandreally,really,REALLYdidn'twatto doit,butIhadtoandfeelreallybadaboutitnow." {AN: For those who do not speak or read Willow-babble, here is the translation – Willow, please forgive me because I am really sorry and really, really, REALLY didn't want to do it, but I had to and feel really bad about it now.} Alex looked over the last line and tried to suppress a chuckle – he was so used to apologizing to Willow that he even typed Willow-babble.  
  
"No, I am not mocking you – I have a witness who has seen me type/Willow- babble that last part and can/will attest to the fact that I did not change any portion of it.  
  
"I can't change what I have done – if I have hurt you, I am sorry. I know you'll turn the Resolved Face on me when you get the chance and ask me why I kept a secret from you ... and my answer to you is that I have always kept secrets, Wills. I wouldn't be me if I didn't.  
  
"I've already mailed Dawn and once I finish up with you I'll mail Buffy – no promises on how long it will take me to type it out, but I have a lot to explain. Make sure she reads it, or if she can't/won't, put the Resolve Face on her and make her listen while you read it. Adios, Alex."  
  
Lynda looked over at him after reading it over, "Willow-babble?"  
  
He sighed, "Redhead."  
  
"Ah."  
  
Sending that message, he pulled up another form and steeled himself; he was about to explain his actions to one of his former best friends, whom he had practically eviscerated verbally, and set his fingers on the keys again, "Alright, Slayer, here's the deal – I type, you read (or if you refuse to read, Willow talks and you listen); I'm sorry. There, happy? Knowing you, probably not, so let me get on with this.  
  
"You have no idea how hard it was for me to do what I did to you in the graveyard that day – it was perhaps the hardest thing I've ever had to do; I can't justify it enough to even myself, so I'm only going to say that it was a breaking point for me – I've had a lot of stuff happening lately and it's been driving me close to the edge and the deaths of both Kendra and Brittany (you never met her, so don't wrack your brain trying to place the name) are what finally did it. I fucked up royally and they paid the price; granted, you not wanting to stake Angelus was part of that frustration, but I was also under orders to not dust the bastard, which happened to be my first instinct (and still is, soul or no soul).  
  
"Let me tell you that I take little-to-no pleasure in doing what I do or having done what I have done; for nearly four months I lied my ass off to each and every one of you, save Jenny as she had an idea of what I was doing via her magic (ask her, I'm still kinda foggy on it, though). I displaced blame, I killed Ethan Rayne, I got people killed because of my inaction and dusted two of the worst vampires to ever walk the earth (Drusilla and her childe, Spike); I like to think that somehow this can or has balanced the scales a bit, but it hasn't – only recently have I been able to look in the mirror and not hate the guy looking back at me, Buff.  
  
"Seeing as I'm airing out my dirty laundry, I might as well tell you something else; remember the Hyena? Remember his attempted rape of you? Remember the killings of both Herbert and Principal Flutie? Well, so do I, though I wasn't in on the murder of the principal; I lied to you even back then about my memory and Giles knew about it. Don't take it out on him – I asked him to keep it from you because I wasn't sure how you would take it.  
  
"Accept it, don't accept it, mail me back and tell me to do myself a favor and never come back to Sunnydale, or if I do save you the trouble and slit my own throat once I get there for all I can tell you. Like I told Dawnie, I can't change what I've done this time and I'll have to live with the consequences for a long time to come, but they were my choices to make and, though reluctantly in some cases, I stand by them. Alexander Lavelle Harris."  
  
Without giving him a chance to talk himself out of it, he savagely hit the SEND button and leaned back in his chair; Lynda had left a few minutes after he started his note to Buffy and he was somewhat glad she had because he never would have finished that note if she hadn't.  
  
"So, you lied to them all."  
  
Damn, "Yeah, Faith, I did." He turned around and saw the Boston-born Slayer standing about five feet behind him with her arms crossed and a blank look on her face, "I lied to my best friends in the entire world about everything after Halloween last year, I killed a Chaos mage that night, and I've gotten an innocent young woman and your predecessor killed in the process too." He stood and held his arms out, "Go ahead and lay into me; I deserve it."  
  
Faith just stood there, her eyes staring into his for a long while until she took a breath and let it out slowly, "No. Nothing I can do to you would ever make up for what you've done to them. I thought I could trust you, Alex."  
  
He nodded, "Faith, you can, and before you call 'Bullshit' on me, let me tell you a little something; I was sent out here for you and you alone. You've got a lot on your plate, Faith, and believe me I know what it's like to have all of this shoved on to you, but I was sent out here to help you with some of your emotional baggage."  
  
"And what would you know about my 'emotional baggage'? You don't know me!"  
  
"You father used to beat you and started raping you at the age of eleven and didn't stop until you ran away from home at fifteen. Your mother was a drug addict, a hooker and was abused wife who died of AIDS when you were ten. You lived on the streets for sixteen months before Lynda found you because you were Called as the Slayer – had she not you probably would have ended up as a junkie or a hooker, possibly both, by the time you hit your next birthday. Tell me at what point in all of this I am wrong and I'll pack my bags and leave town."  
  
She stood in front of him for nearly five minutes, gaping at what had amounted to the highlights of her life up to that point, before she was able to ask, "How did you know all of that?"  
  
He sighed and sat down into the chair, "Faith, what I am about to tell you is a no bullshit answer; I know it because some of it you told me and most of it I figured out from the last timeline."  
  
"Last ... timeline?"  
  
"Yeah; the long and the short of it is that all of this has happened before and I was given a chance to change some of it. I've saved a few people, got a few more killed, and I plan on keeping several more people very much alive and on the side of light, but there you have it."  
  
"No shit?"  
  
"No shit. You essentially got the short end of the Slaying stick and that is one of the things I was given the chance to change; we weren't good friends back then but I hope that you'll give me the chance to change that ... if you'll trust me."  
  
She stood there for a few second, looking as if she was unsure what to do, but then steeled herself, "Are you doing this out of guilt or out of really wanting to be my friend."  
  
"Both," he answered promptly. "Last time, you were like a dark-haired goddess and I was in lust with you from the word 'Go'. Frankly, I never should have gotten a look in with as much of a geek as I was, but seeing as I was trying to include you in the group, you tried, but I screwed it up."  
  
"How?"  
  
Even if he hadn't answered the phone in his pocket, his answer would have been the same as Lex's, "Don't tell her."  
  
"I can't tell you, Faith; some things are better left unknown."  
  
She glared at him slight before she took two steps forwards, now nose-to- nose with him, "You lie or try to hurt me or Lynda and I'll use your guts for garters, Alex."  
  
"First, you'd have to wear a dress to wear my guts as garters, and secondly I'll cut myself open to save you the trouble if I do." He looked deep into her eyes and, as had happened once or twice last time around, was starting to get lost in them when there was a gentle cough from the door way, making the pair of them jump apart and look over at Lynda, who was smiling like a Cheshire cat who had fallen into a milk jug and was drinking it's way to freedom.  
  
"Sorry to interrupt this touching moment, but you have a call, Alex; it's Mister Giles." Lynda smiled at Alex felt a blush start to creep across his face; he could see Faith blushing furiously out of the corner of his eye and thought it was cute.  
  
"Well, that didn't take long." He walked over to his telephone and picked it up, "Hello?"  
  
He then jerked it away as the shouted message came through the receiver loud enough for everyone to hear it, "ALEXANDER LAVELLE HARRIS, BLOODY WELL EXPLAIN YOURSELF RIGHT NOW YOU SODDING WANKER OR I'LL RIP YOUR BLEEDING HEART OUT THROUGH YOUR ARSE!"  
  
Okay, I'm cutting this chapter off right here; the conversation that is to take place I'm not sure I am old enough to hear, let alone write to where kids can read it. R & R, but no flames; my backside is still slightly charred from another I just got and have since erased. AR. 


	6. Of Bullets, Computers and Lightning Bolt...

Setting Things Right  
  
Author: Anime Ronin  
  
Disclaimer: See previous chapters – I'm lazy.  
  
AN: No, I will not describe what was said in the conversation – FF.NET forbids that level of swearing, I believe – so we'll just have to make due with our over-active imaginations on just what was said.  
  
AN2: As to the my actually writing out the e-mails in the last chapter, yes, it was a way of apologizing for both Alex and myself for putting out such crap in his overly-dramatic departure from Sunnydale and his actions up to that point. I would like to thank Queen Boadicea for being as truthful as she was – had she not planted the proverbial axe in my skull, I probably wouldn't have written that last chapter and the story would have well and truly sucked.  
  
AN3: At the end of this chapter the winner of the 'Lynda's friend/acquaintance/pain-in-the-ass' should be named ... or not, I haven't decided.  
  
Chapter 6: Of Bullets, Computers and Lightning Bolts  
  
The next morning after sending out the e-mails to Sunnydale, Alex's ears were still ringing from the verbal filleting he had been given from Giles – up until that point he had never really thought the former dark mage capable of such language, but the variety of topics and the wordage used the previous day had set Alex back on his heels with awe and had even left more than a few still-tender wounds on his psyche.  
  
Shaking off those wounds, he set off on his morning work outs and to make breakfast, as both Lynda and Faith had gone out the previous night on a quick patrol and had run into a small, well, to him a small gang of vampires that numbered twenty and had dusted only ten before both parties decided that discretion was the better part of valor. Quite frankly the both of them looked like hammered dog meat when they returned, so he figured that they were due a good, hearty breakfast that morning.  
  
"Morning, Alex." Faith's voice made him jump slightly and turn as he reached the bottom of the stairs; she was dressed in a pair of sweats and a tank top with socks, but she appeared to be disgustingly chipper that morning, "Ready to work out?"  
  
"What are you doing up, Faith? You barely got in three hours ago."  
  
She shrugged and began to stretch out, "I never was much of a sleeper, and I guess being a Slayer lets us need less sleep."  
  
He shook himself off, clearing his mind of the view he was getting of Faith's backside, intentional or not, and started stretching out as well; the differences between this Faith and the Faith he had known in Sunnydale was remarkable – she didn't ooze sex appeal or inspire wanton lust in all she passed, but rather it was almost understated and snuck up on you if you allowed it to. She wasn't as brash or snarky about things, but not timid or even normal – she was Faith, in her element, and completely comfortable in the fact that she could handle anyone or anything that came her way.  
  
They worked through the push ups, crunches, chin ups and pull ups without a word, Faith matching him move for move, and then he started out on the Tai Chi, as it was bitingly cold that morning; at first it was not noticeable, but it soon became apparent that Faith was having problems centering herself to move properly, so Alex stopped and turned to look at her, "Is there anything wrong, Faith? You're not centered, so you can't do your moves properly."  
  
She blew out a slightly frustrated sigh, "Nothing you would understand, Alex. You're normal."  
  
Alex couldn't help it, he barked out with involuntary laughter that turned into a cackle as he let some of the Hyena shine through and could feel his eyes glow, "Honey, I am a lot of things, but normal isn't one of them. Now what's wrong?" His eyes shifted back and the world lost some of its sharp definition that his Hyena eyesight allowed for.  
  
She shook herself off slightly and looked back at him, "I can't sleep. I can fall asleep but then something wakes me up and I can't get more than an hour at a time."  
  
Alex frowned, "Have you told Lynda? How long has this been going on?"  
  
"Since the first night you were here." She looked hard at him, "What happened?  
  
He had hoped she would not have remembered or known what had happened, but seeing, as he could not get out of it, he planned for the worst, "You were having one hell of a nightmare and Lynda wasn't having too much luck subduing you; I used my strength to hold you in place until you calmed down and went to sleep."  
  
Faith looked slightly troubled by this revelation, "You're stronger than me?"  
  
"At my fullest, yes, but barely. I don't like using my strength any more than I have to and at that point in time it was necessary; forgive me for it." He didn't want Faith to distrust him any more than she did; it would make things harder than they already were.  
  
For a moment she was quiet, looking into his eyes and once again Xander found himself getting lost within her gaze; he new that she needed a friend, but if things kept going like they were he may have trouble defining where the line of 'friend' ended and 'mate' began.  
  
"Alright, but I want to see your strength, full-out, later on." Her voice was neutral but he could tell that she was taking a big chance with what she was saying.  
  
"Okay, but first you get back to bed because this morning, you and Lynda get breakfast in bed by me." He saw something spark in her eyes, "Any preferences?"  
  
"Pancakes? With bacon and eggs?"  
  
He smiled, "Sure. Sunny-side up?" Her smile almost lit up the room and he shooed her out of the kitchen, "Good, get comfortable and I'll be up there in a while." He had barely finished the sentence when she was already on her feet and up the stairs; she apparently liked breakfast in bed, so he'd have to remember it for special occasions.  
  
It took him half of an hour to find and cook all the necessary things for breakfast and then another ten minutes looking for suitable trays; he took Faith her things first and almost lost a hand when she started to wolf down the pancakes – they looked funny, like they were Mickey Mouse with lop- sided ears, but they were cooked and good. Easing his way out of her room, he went to the end of the hall and slowly opened it, making sure that Lynda wasn't undressing or anything; when he saw that it was clear and she was stirring in her bed, he opened the door and walked in.  
  
"Lynda?"  
  
"Hmmmph," came the muffled reply from under the comforter. The lump moved slightly and the edge of the comforter edged down to reveal the half-asleep face of Lynda Price with her normally immaculate hair, as straight as could be and devoid of anything bad, looking like a rat's nest with it's frizzy nature and bed-head look, "Alex? What are you doing in my (yawn) bedroom?"  
  
He smiled, the smart-ass in him coming to the forefront, "Seducing you with breakfast in bed." At her slightly piqued look he expanded, "Bacon, eggs, pancakes, toast, marmalade, some fruit and your breakfast tea, one sugar, and one cream."  
  
She smiled blearily and sat up, revealing that she did indeed sleep in pink flannel pajamas with a yawning teddy bear on the left breast; he held his snicker in place as he placed the tray on to her lap and unveiled her breakfast, "Bon Appetite, Madame."  
  
She took a sniff of the tea and then the pancakes, which lacked the mouse ears of Faith's, and then smiled up at him, "Consider your seduction of me complete for the moment. Now, if you will excuse me," she dove into her own breakfast with much the same gusto as Faith had, only he was far enough away to not get caught in the feeding frenzy.  
  
+++  
  
With breakfast finished and clear away, they set about their daily chores and dealings; school started in a little over a week and Alex would be attending school with Faith to keep an eyes on her – when asked, Lynda revealed that she was a day trader and was actually very good at it. Alex wasn't against the idea of school, but technically he had already graduated high school and wasn't all that keen on going back again, even if he did get to hang around with Faith all day long.  
  
The doorbell rang and Lynda called back, "Alex! Door!"  
  
Alex walked forwards and saw the UPS deliveryman with his dolly and two packages, "Yes?"  
  
"Alex Harris?"  
  
"Yes." He handed over his California driver's license and then signed for the packages, "Thanks, man."  
  
"Whadda ya got there, Alex?" Faith poked her nose over his shoulder as he inspected the two packages, "Plain brown-wrapper boxes? You're ordering porn and sex toys behind our backs and not planning on sharing, Alex? Shame on you!"  
  
He could hear Lynda's laugh echo from the back of the house and he looked over at Faith, "No, miss gutter brain. These are the things I had G-man send me from California." Putting them both on the front table, he opened the first and saw that his SOCOM had been disassembled before being packed, saw all of his mags were full and then the supply of ammunition he had procured in LA.  
  
"Wicked." Faith breathed over his shoulder as he put the SOCOM together with quick, practiced movements and locked a mag of special bullets into the gun, racking the slide, "Cool! Can I try it out?"  
  
He gave her a look, "Does this LOOK like a toy to you, Faith? Until Lynda gives her say-so and you get licensed, no." He then opened the other box and put the UMP together, attaching the suppressor, scope, sling and fitting the forward grip into place before slapping in a mag and racking the bolt mechanism. "Good to go."  
  
"Lynda, can I PLEASE have one of those?" He looked over to see Lynda had come into the room and Faith was dong her best to make puppy dog eyes at the older woman, "PLEASE!" Had it been Dawn making that level of pleading, he would have given her anything, including a kidney if so desired, but with Faith the 'innocents defined' look didn't look right.  
  
"No, Faith."  
  
"But he gets to have them!" Faith started to pout and it was all he could do not to chuckle.  
  
"But he has a license for both weapons, Faith."  
  
"So get me one, too!" She was in full pout mode and Alex found himself trying even harder not to laugh, while Lynda's resolve was quickly fading under Faith's mostly sincere brown eyes.  
  
"No Faith."  
  
"YES!"  
  
"NO!"  
  
"YES, YES, YES!"  
  
"NO, NO, NO, NO!"  
  
"YESYESYESYESYESYESYESYES!"  
  
Lynda's jaw set resolutely, "No, times infinity plus one."  
  
"Y- ... damn."  
  
Alex couldn't handle it anymore and felt to the ground, howling in laughter as the Slayer and Watcher went back and forth like a pair sisters or best friends, or Buffy and Willow in some cases.  
  
+++  
  
Alex and Faith stepped into the 'Whiz Kids' computer store to pick up his system; Diane had called an hour before and Lynda was waiting outside – Faith was not, Alex told himself, present for protection from Diane, even if both were dressed in leather pants, halter tops and looked absolutely mate-worthy. "Diane."  
  
"Harris." The now-electric-blue haired woman smiled prettily at him and then looked oddly at Faith, "And this is?"  
  
"Faith, the friend that I came to help out. Now, to business; the system is ready, right?"  
  
Diane smiled, "Yes it is; fired it up this morning and tested it out personally – it was hard to decide what to do with it, so I ran it through the paces." She stated the balance on his system and then accepted his cash, "You know, Harris, you never did give me an answer on my offer from last time – ya want something to eat?" The sex appeal oozed out of her voice and for a split second, Alex was VERY tempted to say yes, but Faith beat him to answering.  
  
"Sorry, honey, but he has something to eat at the house – a variety, actually." He didn't have to look at her to see the smile on her face; he could feel it from where he was looking over the list of things in the system.  
  
"Oh really? Are they of good quality?"  
  
"Some of the best you can get around these parts," he chipped in absently as he bundled up the packet she had handed over. "Now, can we see it?"  
  
"That's a loaded question, Alex," Faith snickered as Diana began to blush lightly.  
  
In a little over twenty minutes Diana showed he and Faith all she had done to the computer and what she had loaded on to the hard drive; there was a copious amount of flirting between all three parties and while Alex found it occasionally difficult to keep his mind on business, it felt good to be able to forget just who he had started to become.  
  
"Damn," he cursed even as his phone buzzed in his pocket – he had jinxed it, "Go."  
  
"Alex, we have a slight situation that you need to be apprised of; Kakistos in now in Boston and hunting Faith."  
  
"Location and Defenses?"  
  
"I shall have them sent to your e-mail," Lex promised just before he killed the connection.  
  
"Shit." He looked over at where both Faith and Diana, both of whom looked very worried, "I need to get into my e-mail, now." He went to the computer that Diana gestured to and quickly entered his account, noting that Dawn had left a message that read 'OPEN RIGHT NOW, XANDER', but forwent it and opened the post by Lex, reading it for a moment, "Well this isn't good."  
  
"What is it, Alex?" Faith looked over his shoulder and read the note, "Who is Kakistos?"  
  
"Master Vampire who has just gotten into town and is already hunting you."  
  
"What'd I ever do to him?"  
  
"You were Called, Faith. He's one bad hombre and he needs to be taken out now."  
  
"So I stake him and we go home to mess with your computer."  
  
Alex shook his head, "He's over two thousand years old, Faith – stakes don't go through his skin anymore." (AN: The Greek Freak is 2000+, right? If not, sorry.) Alex logged out of his account and looked over at Diana, who looked worried, "I'll pick it up tomorrow ... or not at all." That said, he left the shop and ran back to the house, remembering just what Kakistos had done the last time around, "No chance in Heaven, Hell or Earth, vampire."  
  
+++  
  
"Have you lost your mind, Alex?" Lynda looked over at him as he tugged his shirt down into place, hiding the body armor he had picked up from the Sunnydale Armory a while back, and then strapped his thigh holster into place, "He is a Master Vampire and he will kill you."  
  
"Maybe, maybe not, but we'll see just how well these bullets work and just how impenetrable his hide really is." Checking the mag on his SOCOM, he racked the slide and slid it into the holster before checking the UMP over.  
  
Lynda sighed, "Faith, can you talk some sense into him?"  
  
"Already tried to, Lynda, but it appears here that boytoy has a death wish." She sat on the other edge of his bed even as he slapped the mag into the UMP and worked the action on it, "Do you even know where he is, Alex?"  
  
"Yes, I do, Faith, and no, I don't have a death wish – I don't want to die but I don't fear it either." Snugging up the sling on the weapon, he slid his long duster over the entire affair and began loading the numerous pockets, inside and out, with various pieces of equipment that ranged from duct tape to a pair of WP grenades he'd managed to lift back in Sunnydale.  
  
"This is why you were sent here, wasn't it." It wasn't a question with the way it was said by Lynda, whom had apparently pieced everything together.  
  
"Part of it, yes. If this goes right, nobody else will have to die because of him."  
  
"And if it doesn't?" Faith's question hung in the air for a moment before he found the courage to answer it, even if it was cryptic.  
  
"Then I hope that everything comes out for the best, Faith." He looked over at her and saw that her eyes, while not full of tears, had a sheen to them, "Faith, I know that you don't know me very well, but let me tell you that there are two things that I absolutely do not tolerate – child abuse and letting my friends get hurt when there is something I can do about it. You and Lynda are my friends and with Kakistos gunning for you, he's going to have to go through me first to get you."  
  
"Pretty words, Alex, but if you're dead, where does that leave us?" Lynda sat next to Faith, her own gray eyes narrowed slightly, "Let's just say that you don't come back tonight and Kakistos survives – where does that leave us?"  
  
"Get out of Boston and go to Sunnydale without any delay – Buffy and Giles will know what to do." Going to his dresser he grabs a crucifix from a small tray and puts it on, slipping it under his armor, as a last line of defense, "I may die, but I'll take more than a few of them with me, girls, my promise to God." That said, he walked out of the room, doing his best to ignore the sound of Faith breaking into tears and Lynda doing her best to console the Slayer. It was times like this that Lex's words came back to haunt him, about him being a cold SOB when necessary.  
  
(AN: I know it seems fatalistic and slightly callus right now, but do you honestly think they will let him go and face Kakistos all alone? Yes, it does appear that Faith worries about him, but that could just be a friendly kind of a worry.)  
  
+++  
  
"What in the hell was I thinking?" It was the seventh time he'd asked himself that even as he set up the last of the booby traps on the visible exits of the warehouse; he'd procured some plastique and detonators, just a small amount, but he had enough for four doors and used the two WP grenades on sky-access windows that were readily accessible from catwalks; he had to have been smoking some good stuff to think that he alone could take one a twenty century old Master Vampire with fifty of his closest minions alone. It was a bad idea but it was also the only one he had with the girls back at the house.  
  
"I'm not sure, Alex," a voice said from right behind him, Faith's voice, and he cursed himself for not sensing her earlier. "What WERE you thinking earlier? Did you believe I'd leave you out to dry while you pulled off a wicked crazy stunt like this?"  
  
"No, I didn't think you'd follow me. Where's Lynda?"  
  
"Right here, Mister Harris," came the woman's cool voice, making him look up and try not to chortle at the chakram on her waist, which sat next to a sword and several crosses in a stiff leather belt.  
  
"Stay off the doors and the windows, they're rigged to blow." He sighed, looking at the pair of women, "What are you two doing here?"  
  
"Pulling your fat out of the fire if you get into trouble," came the snarky reply from Faith.  
  
"And whom, might I ask, will be pulling your fats out of the fire if we do find trouble down there?" He glared at Faith and then at Lynda, whom both smiled at him slightly, making him groan, "Yeah, okay, I deserved that." He pulled his SOCOM and holster off, handing it to Faith, "Do NOT shoot me with that, Faith, or Lynda for that matter." He showed the slightly giddy Slayer how to load, chamber and drop the mag from the gun quickly, making sure she had it down before he moved up to where Lynda sat and removed his jacket, and then his shirt, followed by his armor, which he handed to her; she and Faith being kept safe were paramount in this op now that they were there, so he'd have to be a little more careful than he normally was.  
  
"Everyone ready?"  
  
"Not yet," Lynda said to Faith, looking at Alex as he pulled his shirt and jacket back on. "Plan?"  
  
"Rake the outside flanks with controlled shots and whittle away at the minions while you cover our six and make sure to keep an eye on Kakistos." It wasn't much of a plan, but it was the best he could come up with on such short notice for three instead of one. "One shot per vamp, Faith; do not waste your ammo on them – fire and forget. Got it?"  
  
"Five by five, boytoy." He cringed at that slightly, seeing Lynda arch an eyebrow at both of them out of the corner of his eye, but looked at Faith with a LOOK, which she shrugged off with a smirk.  
  
"Alright, let's go. May God help us all," he muttered the last part under his breath as they made their way into the warehouse, sneaking as quietly as they could, but even as they did Alex amped his strength and senses up to what he called 'combat mode', which was about two or three slips above that of normal for him, which happened to be twice that of normal humans.  
  
Over the next ten minutes they worked their way into the warehouse that Kakistos had set himself and his lieutenant, Mr. Trick, up in while they bolstered their forces, which by Alex's eye, consisted of fifty vampires of various backgrounds; he took point with Faith covering Lynda in the back, but all the time Alex was doing his best to keep an ear or a nose out for trouble in every direction. Soon they found themselves in the midst of the vampires, both minions and master, and in a loose line that went from Lynda to Alex himself and Faith left to right – Faith had screwed the suppressor on to the SOCOM at some point and Alex had done the same thing to the UMP before arriving at the warehouse, but also had it set to single shot in hopes to control his ammunition expenditures and maximize the damage output.  
  
Looking over at Lynda, then at Faith, he raised his UMP level and squeezed off three quick shots at the three closest vampires while Faith snapped off two – three vampires incinerated themselves, one convulsed in shock and another shattered into icy chunks before all hell broke loose with Faith leading the charge and emptying her mag with abandon while Alex chose his targets and Lynda yipped loudly and slung her chakram at whomever was coming up behind them. Soon, however, most of the minions were either dust, crouching under cover, or had run away, leaving Kakistos standing arrogantly out in the open, Trick behind him and Lynda covering Faith, whom was trying to reload the SOCOM.  
  
"Ah, we have guests, my childe." Kakistos' voice was like a set of French- manicured nails screeching across the chalkboards with their purring and sent shivers up Alex's spine. "Bold, effective planning and execution of this ambush and weaponry to back up any threats they make – they will make excellent additions to our family."  
  
"No chance, Kakistos," Faith snarled as she worked the slide on the SOCOM, firing at the freak but stopping when the bullet ... stopped. "What the fuck?"  
  
"Charming in her use of language, isn't she? I would figure that the Slayer would know more about her adversaries before engaging them; I, for one, know that young Alexander by her side has made a most impressive impact upon the world with his ... imaginative use of modern weaponry and brutal ruthlessness against both friend and foe alike."  
  
"You know a lot for a corpse, Kakistos," Alex said, reaching into a pocket and pulling out a canister that he hoped would work.  
  
"The Art of War is a book that teaches everyone, even I, how to do battle, Alexander. Now, give me the Slayer and her Watcher and I shall allow you to go free."  
  
Alex pulled the pin on the canister and let the lever fly off, "Um, no, I think not." Hurling the can at Kakistos, he wasn't surprised that it flew past the vampire and his minion, because that was what he had planned. "Last chance to get out of this with your un-life, bloodsucker. Leave or be dust."  
  
Kakistos snarled out a laugh, "You amuse me, Alexander – do you really think that holy water hand grenades would work against me?"  
  
Alex paused, "You watch Monty Python?"  
  
The vampire shrugged, "Doesn't everybody?"  
  
"Actually, that wasn't holy water, Kakistos." Bringing his UMP up again, he grinned, "It was a hydrocarbon mixed with a chemical that makes it similar to napalm in that it sticks to whatever it touches." Flipping the UMP to full auto, he grinned more, taking a slightly feral nature even as Faith began to chuckle and Lynda also chuckled, which made both Kakistos and Trick frown, "Anybody care for some vampire flambé?" He pulled the trigger and emptied the last six rounds in the mag before watching the fireworks, almost literally.  
  
In an instant both Kakistos and Trick were engulfed in fire that began to spread, which made the hidden vampires run and open doors and windows, which were rigged to blow, and made all hell break loose even as Lynda grabbed him and Faith, dragging them out of the now-burning warehouse. He could hear the screams of the vampires caught in the inferno even as they ducked into Lynda's waiting mustang and sped off, minutes before the police and fire departments arrived.  
  
+++  
  
The ride back to the house was a silent one, well, silent after Alex managed to get Faith to hand over the SOCOM and tac holster – Lynda went to her room to write up an after action report to detail what went down with Kakistos, Faith was feeling uppity and went to the punching bag for a few rounds while Alex went to an old friend for an old routine, staring at a shot of whiskey with both it and the bottle out of reach. It still irked him slightly that just as he was getting to enjoy his, albeit temporary, new life with Lynda and Faith, when his boss Lex stuck his nose back into things – sure, he was his boss and, such was fitting the title, could tell him what to do, but Alex was starting to wonder just whom had gotten the better end of the deal with being sent back, him with having a second chance or Lex, whom had used him as his own little assassin/counter-agent?  
  
"Your father drinks." It wasn't a statement from Lynda as she walked into the room, taking a seat next to him.  
  
"In excess."  
  
"You do this to spite him?"  
  
"It's meditative."  
  
"How so?"  
  
Alex only shrugged his shoulders, "Not sure, but it works." He really needed to get more guy friends his own age this time around – Oz was starting to rub off on him way too much from the last time line. "Your report done?"  
  
"Yes – I have amended it to show very little involvement on your part in case anybody at the Council got too curious about you."  
  
"Travers, you mean." Alex let out a ghostly chuckle and reached for a pack of cigarettes, "I'll enjoy putting a bullet into that bastard when the time comes." Smoking was a habit that the Soldier had taken up for an after-op ritual, and somehow it had crossed over.  
  
As he lifted one to his lips, Lynda snatched it out of his hand, "You shall not smoke in the house, Alexander. If I can't you can't." She looked longingly at the cigarette before shredding it in her hands, "So, what was with that little performance earlier? If we had not followed you, would you have been able to take Kakistos alone?"  
  
"Probably not – sometimes I get an over-inflated view of self worth and importance, Lynda. I've been given certain advantages and inside information, so it makes me think I am superior, but I'm not. It happens to everybody, Slayers too, so let's count this as a lesson learned and be done with it." Reaching over, he poured the shot back into the bottle and put the stopper in it, "Night, Lynda."  
  
"Good night, Alexander."  
  
+++  
  
Picking up the computer from a very relieved Diane the next morning was the highlight of said morning – she laid one on him the second he walked in the door, in front of God and everyone, and then slapped him good and proper for scaring her and Jenny like that. It took only a few minutes to explain, in vague terms due to the people present, what had gone down and he walked out of there with is new computer. Once back at the house, as the girls were still sleeping, he quietly set up the system ad opened his mail, Dawn's first.  
  
To: Xharris@y......  
  
From: DawnPatrol4ever@y...... Subject: OPEN RIGHT NOW, XANDER!  
  
Alright, mister, we need to have a SERIOUS discussion about what went down on Halloween. I know I dressed as Mako-chan, but aside form the odd need to kick Buffy's butt, nothing weird happened until yesterday when I accidentally fried a tree across the street – I called down a bolt of lightning from a clear, blue sky, Xander. This has me really freaked out, so mail me back and tell me what you think about it. Giles and Jenny are both working on it, but I need to know what my future husband thinks about me being a living bug zapper. Love, Dawn. PS. Buffy's being a cow about my wanting Mr. Gordo – can you talk some sense into her?  
  
Alex smiled at Dawn's message – he'd hoped something like that would not have happened to her, but she lived on the Hellmouth, so it was always a possibility. The 'future husband' part niggled at him slightly – he'd be nearly 23 when she was of legal marrying age, and add to the fact that if, and this was a gigantic if, IF he allowed himself to ever see her like that, then he'd probably face the wrath of Buffy, Willow, Ripper and worst of all, Joyce.  
  
To: DawnPatrol4ever@y......  
  
From: Xharris@y...... Subject: ROTGLMAO  
  
I know you think that it's serious, Dawnie, but remember this – you live on the Hellmouth, so things will seem odd on occasion; this is probably just a little something left in your system from Halloween and it was your mind's way of getting rid of it. Now, if it happens, again, make sure you point it at anyone other than your mom, sister or the Scoobies (try Cordy's sheep for target practice – it'd probably be the first original thing to go through their minds in a while ... kidding, don't use it on them).  
  
Oh, and to your 'future husband' remark – honey, I'd be honored to one day walk you down the isle, but first I'd have to make it pats your sister, Willow, Giles and then your mom, so I don't see it happening any time soon. Now, I gotta go – someone is at the door. Write back soon, X.  
  
Sending off the mail, he went to the front door and opened it, "Yes?"  
  
"Is Lynda here?" The man before him was of average height, with dark hair and eyes, a goatee and pork chops down his jawline, but was also dressed from head to toe in black and looked over his sunglasses at Alex. "And whom, might I ask are you?"  
  
"Alex Harris, I'm staying with Lynda and Faith for a while before I go back to California." Mentally cursing himself for forgetting his gun, he stepped back and edged the door shut, "One second please." Once the door closed, he smirked and walked up the stairs to Lynda's room, wondering just how to tell her that Ares was here to see his 'Warrior Princess' and leave with all of his parts and pieces in place.  
  
AN1: Okay, here's Part 6 to Setting Things Right – I also have a severe case of writer's block, hence the crappy / generic scene between Kakistos and X/F/L. I tallied up the votes and Area won the poll and will generally be the pain in the ass he's always been towards the 'Xena' character.  
  
AN2: Note – The Assassin and the Sorceress will be taken down for a total re-vamping; the story I have on my computer just flat-ass sucks and I'm getting bored with the game/statistics/ limitations, so I'm removing it for now and retooling it. Expect nothing out of me for a while – finals are coming up and they will be a true pain in the ass this year (what possessed me to take 24 credit hours? – oh yeah, I want to get out of school, that's what possessed me.), so I need to buckle down. Thanks, and remember to review. AR. 


	7. It's Like Tennis, Really

Setting Things Right  
  
Author: Anime Ronin  
  
Rating: PG – 13 (swearing)  
  
Summary: There are some things that cannot be abided by in the grand scheme of things and in those instances a person is selected to go back and to set them right. Naturally, in this case, it is one Alexander Harris who is chosen to do so.  
  
Disclaimer: I own nothing.  
  
Feedback: Yes, please.  
  
AN: Okay, this one will be something on the lighter side – generally how Lynda and her Ares look-a-like interact with Faith and Alex on the sidelines, occasionally with Diane in the mix (while this story may end up as a F/X, Diane would be an interesting agitator within it for when they go back to Sunnydale and she follows them).  
  
AN2: This will be the last part of the 'Setting Things Right' series (I'll start another series to pick up where this one leaves off) – after this I shall try and finish some of my other Works In Progress and then I'll start on some real sequels. Look for a poll at the end of this story to cast your vote as to which story (not Series – the Pale Horse series already has a sequel in the works) you'd like to see have a sequel.  
  
Setting Things Right Ch.7 – It's Like A Tennis Match, Really  
  
"What in the hell are you doing here, Adam?" Lynda Price, Watcher of Faith Williams, The Slayer, stormed into the parlor in front of her long-time rival and constant pain-in-the-ass from childhood, Adam Michaels, dressed in her pink flannel pajamas to his dark tailored suit, furious at Adam for showing up unannounced and Alexander for letting him into the house.  
  
Adam wore his trademark grin as he removed his sunglasses, but then lost said grin when he saw that Alexander had stopped by his room and picked up his pistol, suppressed and all, "Well, I was in the neighborhood and decided to stop in and say hi."  
  
"Bollocks," Lynda snarled as Alexander, along with Faith, who had followed them down in a zombie-like state, went to the couch and knelt down behind it as if he were expecting an explosion of some sorts. "There are only three reasons that you show up where I am for any reason – first is the make my life a living hell with your mere presence, second is to get me to sign off on some positively American idea that can never work, and third is to see if you can try and get within my trousers, which has about as much chance of happening as the President does of becoming a priest."  
  
Adam took up a wounded pose and expression, "Do you truly think THAT little of me, Lynda?" I'm crushed, really."  
  
"Alex, don't lose that gun, I might need it soon," Lynda called over the couch's back, getting a two-finger salute of affirmative in return from the young man, but she also heard a snicker from Faith and could see the worried expression on Adam's face when she looked back.  
  
"You would shoot me, Lynda?" All of the cockiness was gone, replaced with worry.  
  
"Of course she wouldn't," came Alex's voice, followed by his head poking up over the couch, but it was the unsettling grin he wore on that face that made Lynda smile and Adam frown. "She'll probably get me to shoot you, Adam, and Faith to help dispose of your body."  
  
"See, Adam? What did I tell you – Americans CAN be useful, especially when there is violence involved." She smirked for a second, even as a stereo of, "HEY!" was heard from behind the couch and then lost that smirk, "Now, what are you dong here?"  
  
Adam gulped slightly and then smiled slightly, "I was sent by the Council to see you and your Slayer, actually. What I want to know is why this young man is here?"  
  
"He's helping Faith with personal problems and with Slaying."  
  
Adam raised an eyebrow, "You let a child do a Slayer's job?"  
  
"Yes, especially when he has ammunition that kills vampires, is an excellent marksman, a sneaky bastard and has been sent by the Powers to help out; of course as I have not told the Council about this, you'll just have to trust me on it."  
  
Adam paled, "The Powers? Why would they send a boy to do a man's job?"  
  
"Because they know that I'm capable of cold-blooded murder, ya Ares wanna- be, and that's why I was selected." The Finger was shot at Adam from behind the couch and Lynda could hear a soft snoring from Faith, whom had apparently fallen back asleep, "So make sure you tell that ass wipe Travers that if he's thinking of performing that Crucitacium, or whatever it's called, on Faith, he's going to have to come through me first ... and I shoot to kill, so make sure you send someone expendable with him."  
  
Even Lynda was silent about that for several seconds, but then a small snore from Faith broke it and she looked over at Adam, "Well, there you have it. Now, tell me, Adam, why did the Council send you here, really?"  
  
"They sent me to inform you that in two weeks you will be heading to Sunnydale to work along side the other Slayer, Buffy Summers; I trust there will be no problems, especially with the somewhat spectacular parting that young mister Harris left with?"  
  
"He assures me that it has been dealt with, at the very least, and I trust him. Now, your message has been delivered, so leave." She turned to go back up the stairs and go back to bed, but Adam grabbed her arm, holding her in place.  
  
"Lynda, we have SO much to catch up on, so you can't leave just yet." His voice was smooth, like sweet butter spread upon a slice still-warm homemade bread, but she didn't fall for it for a second.  
  
"I am tired, Adam, and you remember just how much of a crab I am capable of being when I am tired, so allow me to go back upstairs, ALONE, get a few more hours of sleep and then we shall try and have a civil conversation." Not waiting for an answer, she went back up the stairs, her footsteps occasionally punctuated by her Slayer's soft snoring.  
  
After putting Faith back in bed, Alex was the only one in the house left to deal with this 'Adam Michaels' character; to save him the trouble of stashing his gun, he now wore it on his thigh in the tactical holster and wore a blank expression, "Coffee?"  
  
"Yes, please. You know, I am not that dangerous, so you don't have to wear your gun."  
  
"I'm exercising my right to bear arms, Mister Michaels, and as I don't yet trust anyone in the Council outside of Lynda and Rupert Giles, I'm keeping my options open for the time being. Cream and sugar?"  
  
"One of each, please," Adam said in a very worried voice, and Alex was forced to turn away to keep a smirk from showing on his face. "So, Alexander, tell me, just how it is that you have resolved your problems with Slayer Summers?"  
  
"I never said they were resolved, Mister Michaels, merely out in the open, and where it goes from there is completely up to her." Making the coffee cup up as requested, he set Adam's down in front of him and took a seat directly across from him, "So, how long have you known Lynda and what did you do to piss her off this much?"  
  
Adam chuckled and stirred his coffee, "Nearly thirty years, and I think my mere existence annoys her to no end; apparently she is still sore about me stealing a doll of hers just after we first met."  
  
"They CAN hold a grudge, can't they," Alex said, remembering just how much of a grudge Willow held against him for his past mistakes, the Barbie Doll Incident included. "But this must go beyond a simple doll."  
  
Adam was silent for a moment before he spoke again, "She was fourteen, a few days older than me, actually, when her long-time crush was turned, Alex, and after he knocked her out, I staked him and then made the mistake of telling her about the entire affair. She didn't speak to me for nearly a month, and then after that she was so ... distant, I guess is the way to put it."  
  
"Been there myself, but it's what I didn't tell them that came back to bite me in the ass." They each took a sip of coffee and Alex went back, "So what do you do in the Council of Watchers, Adam?"  
  
"Leg work, mostly, but occasionally I research and even can make potions, so it never really gets dull. What do you do, Alexander?"  
  
"Learn, survive, kill, and repeat as necessary, normally. Now, I'm just trying to stabilize Faith emotionally by being her friend."  
  
"Slayers shouldn't have friends, Alexander; it makes them rely on their emotions and, thus, weak."  
  
"Then why has Buffy lasted longer than any Slayer in the past five hundred years?"  
  
"Because she doesn't follow the rules of her Watcher to the letter and allows untrained civilians to help her out, though I am beginning to see that your training is evident. SAS possession?"  
  
Alex snorted, "Sport And Social? Hell no, Green Berets, twenty years starting back in '65 as a grunt in 'Nam, three tours and black ops around the world since then; bought it back in the last part of the eighties when a vamp decided he needed a late-night snack."  
  
"Specialties?"  
  
"Assassination, explosives, stealth tactics and strategic planning, and those are the ones that I want to remember. Why do you want to know all of this?"  
  
Adam shrugged, "I wanted to know in case I ever pissed you off – believe it or not, not everybody within the Council is out to use the Slayers as a tool, like Travers and his cronies."  
  
"I think I'll reserve judgment on that, Mister Michaels." He leaned forwards, making sure that he could be heard, "But if you ever hurt Faith or Lynda, or anything you say gets them hurt, I swear by God, Satan and everyone in between that I will hunt you and the ones who harmed them down and make sure your and their last day on Earth is full of pain. Am I making myself clear?"  
  
"Perfectly," Adam managed to say, his face pale as a sheet. "Actually, I would expect nothing less of someone who works for the being known as Lex."  
  
"Keep that in mind, then. So, family?"  
  
Looking a little perturbed at the quickly change of subject, it took him a second to reply, "Mother and father, no wife or kids that I know of, though I'm sure that Lynda would accuse me of being a man whore and having at least a dozen kids by as many women around the world." He laughed at that, a faintly amused chuckle that seemed to carry, then took a drink of coffee, "And yourself?"  
  
"No biological parents that I would claim, if that's what you're asking, and I'm an only child – I'm not sure if that's a good thing or not, so I'll reserve judgment." After a few seconds, though, he felt a wry grin reach his lips and gave forth a dark chuckle, "Though to tell you the truth, Tony and Jessica Harris should have never been allowed to breed, depending on whom you intend to ask – I have my father's temper, my mother's sense of humor and a proclivity to snark off at anyone whom is a good target."  
  
"Yes, that is what your profile at the Council says."  
  
"I have a profile? And while we're on the subject, how did you know whom I work for?"  
  
Adam smiled, "Mister Giles is still a watcher, and even if your little, shall we say, verbal evisceration of Slayer Summers were less private, when all seven members of the Powers That Be are in one place on this plane of existence, people take notice."  
  
"You were eavesdropping, weren't you." It wasn't a question.  
  
Adam shrugged, "Eavesdropping is such an ugly word..."  
  
"But it's the truth, in this case." Alex took a sip of his coffee and leaned back in the chair a little, eyes narrowed slightly in thought, "I shouldn't be surprised, really, namely because I haven't tried to be really covert about any of my doings where the Slayer wasn't directly involved."  
  
Adam grinned, "Some of the members of the Capture Teams within the Council want to recruit you, actually, once you finish high school – apparently you have impressed them to no end."  
  
"Capture Teams? How ... ominous."  
  
"Ex-SAS, RMF and MI-5 members along with a smattering of foreign intelligence and military services thrown in for flavor, for the most part; you'd probably do quite well there, given the right circumstances."  
  
Alex shook his head, "No, I don't like to wake up that early without a purpose, Mr. Michaels."  
  
"My friends call me Adam."  
  
"I never said I was your friend just yet, Mr. Michaels – how far would you go to protect your Slayer, if you had one, and Lynda? What rules of the Council would you be ready, willing and able to break to protect them?"  
  
"If it keeps them alive, all of them," Adam said without a second of hesitation.  
  
Alex nodded, "Noble words, but trust me when I say that the day will come when those words may have to be put into action – you know where I stand on the matter, so make sure you toe your line," he grinned roguishly, "ya limey bastard."  
  
Adam grinned good-naturedly, "Sodding Yank."  
  
Alex fired back immediately, "Git."  
  
"Wanker."  
  
"Sodding Poof."  
  
"Ponce."  
  
With a devilish grin, Alex delivered the coup de grace in the form of a dire insult to all Britons in times past, "Frenchman." (AN: This was told to me by a co-worker of mine a while back, an Englishwoman whom got to Texas as quickly as she could – she was 45 at the time)  
  
Adam looked at him in pure horror, "TAKE THAT BACK!"  
  
Alex gave him a cheeky grin and then took a sip of his nearly cool coffee, "Sorry, but my coffee is cold and I forgot myself for a moment. Forgive me."  
  
Adam sniffed in mock-distain as he prepared to leave, "Cheeky sod."  
  
"Pretty words, Alex," Faith told him as soon as he got to the top of the stairs, still dressed in her shorts and tank top, but now a pair of pink bunny slippers on her feet with two piercings in each ear. She smiled, batting her eyelashes, and strutted forwards, "You would kill for little ol' me?"  
  
"Of course I would, Faith ... unless you took the last Twinkie, then it's every person for themselves."  
  
She lost her smile, "I take the last Twinkie once and you never let me hear the end of it, do you. How many times have I asked you to leave the seat down when you come out of the bathroom at night? To not leave just a mouthful of milk in the fridge to spite me, let alone leave just half of a bowl of cereal for me to chow on."  
  
"Oh, that was NOT me, toots. The cereal thief was Lynda and you and I both know it – who else besides you even eats Lucky Charms in this house?"  
  
She looked at him oddly, "Sorry, but not everybody is a fan of Cap'n Crunch or Coco Puffs, Alex. Some of us like to have a grownup breakfast in the morning."  
  
"Eating marshmallow-laden, shaped marshmallows none the less, cereal in a mixing bowl with half of a gallon of milk, some toast and two slices of pizza from the night before is a grownup breakfast?" (AN: Room temp. pizza and spaghetti – the breakfast of champions ... or frozen chocolate frosted Pop Tarts)  
  
"For some, yes, it is." She drew herself up with a smile and spun 180 degrees, sauntering away, "Feel free to join me, but I'm going back to bed."  
  
"Don't tempt me, Faith," he told her as she entered her room, to which she winked saucily at him and then shut the door. "Please don't tempt me."  
  
Going to his room, he fired up his lap top and un-strapped his thigh holster before connecting to the Internet and logging into his e-mail; there were three pieces there and they were pieces he had been expecting for a while now. Figuring her's would be safest, he opened Willow's mail.  
  
Alright, Mister, I have cussed you out in Hebrew and English for a while and your apology was somewhat contrite (and I don't believe you about someone being there to see you type your own attempt at my patented Willow- babble) and will be accepted when you answer me one question – why? Why didn't you tell me about your being sent back to make changes? Why didn't you trust me? Write back, soon, or else.  
  
Hitting the reply button, he began to type; I didn't trust you because if you remember the temporal prime directive, Wills, it's better for someone to not know their own future – if I told you from when I was from, you would have found a way to get answers you were not and still are not ready for. Give my love to Dawnie, I gotta write Jenny. X.  
  
Hitting the Send button, he went on to look at Jenny's message, Alexander, you and I need to have a SERIOUS conversation about just what your intentions are with my cousin. She has informed me that she is going to marry you so that she can strap you to her bed and ... well, use your imagination, but she is dead-set against letting you go for some odd reason. What did you do to her? Not another love spell I hope. With Love, Jenny.  
  
He hit reply, I did not put a love spell on your cousin, Jenny – she's a beautiful young woman who will no doubt make some very lucky man VERY happy one day, but she and I ... well, I'm not sure if we would have any real chemistry. Please tell her that it is not personal, but my eyes are for a certain computer TEACHING gypsy woman (wink-wink, chuckle). Fair thee well, oh beautiful one, Alexander. Hitting the send button, he opened the last piece of mail, this one from Joyce, and immediately his throat tightened at the opening words.  
  
Alexander Lavelle Harris, you are in trouble, young man. It took Buffy two days to stop crying at the drop of a hat after your little explosion in the cemetery, then another four at the mere mention of your name – I know that I am still very new to the concept of vampires and demons, but from what I understand you work for one of the beings that are, essentially, Buffy's bosses, have lied to us all since Halloween, have committed murder on at least one occasion (although after a talk with Mr. Giles, Mr. Rayne seemed to have gotten off lightly) and now seem to be working with the young woman who replaced Kendra, who was called after my daughter DIED (which nobody told me about).  
  
Sigh I guess it's too much for me to handle all at once, but know that when you get back, young man, we are going to have one very serious conversation about the truthfulness that should be shred between mother and son – I realize that you will and have been forced to do things that you may not like to do, but why didn't you tell me? I like to think that I would have understood. Write back, Xander, or call. Love, Joyce.  
  
Screwing up his courage, he set his fingers on the keyboard and began to haltingly type out a response, Joyce, I'm sorry I did what I did, but it had to be done, as it were – I needed to snap at somebody and Buffy presented the best target due to her past mistakes. Yes, your daughter died, but I brought her back, I've all but resolved the Rayne deal (it was a necessary evil, but it had to be done). I won't lie to you, Joyce, I've done a lot of questionable things before and I will more than likely do some questionable things from now on, but they are necessary – trust me on that. I'll write back more often, I promise, but for now I have to go, Xander.  
  
Shutting down his connection to the Internet, he powered down and put away his laptop before just sitting on the edge of his bed, thinking of everything that had gone down in the past few days – Kakistos was dead, as was Trick, Lynda was still alive, Faith was now, hopefully, more emotionally stable, he'd come to terms with just what had happened with his friends (?) in Sunnydale and realized just how hard it was going to be to get them to trust him ever again.  
  
He didn't even flinch when he felt his phone go off, "Go."  
  
"Excellent work, Alexander, and a job well done so far. I had hopes that Mister Michaels would not probe so deeply into your connection with us, but seeing as the Council has their ways, it was bound to happen."  
  
"Threat probability?"  
  
"Minimal – despite Ms. Price's thoughts of him, he is a very loyal person, to her mostly, and will never betray her or Faith to the Council."  
  
"Cool."  
  
"Now, for the bad news – Diane Calderash, as she is known to her family, will also be following you to Sunnydale in hopes to bed with you. How you deal with this is entirely up to you, of course," the deep bass voice rumbled with a chuckle, "but she will be very persistent in her endeavor."  
  
"Joy."  
  
"Now, when you get back to Sunnydale, deliver the envelope I have given to you for Joyce Summers – stay with her as she reads it and comfort her until I call. She'll be fine, but it will not be pleasant news."  
  
"Hu-ah."  
  
"Are you tired, Alexander?"  
  
"Not so much physically, sir, but it's been a very emotionally draining few days."  
  
"I see – take a few days off to consider your options, but make sure to keep an eye out on Slayer Williams."  
  
"Yes, sir." He closed the phone as the connection terminated and then flopped back onto his mattress with a suppressed snort and closed his eyes, "So very tired."  
  
It was an odd feeling, really – he was laying on his back, could hear the sound of the washing machine somewhere on the floor below him, yet there was a heavy and pleasantly warm lump on his chest that smelled faintly of strawberries; cracking open his eyes, he saw a mass of dark hair covering a fairly young face and realized that at some point in time Faith had come into the room and had, apparently, fallen asleep across his chest. "Huh?"  
  
"She's been there for almost an hour, Alex," Lynda's voice was filled with mirth even though he could not torque his head around that far to see her. "Comfortable?"  
  
With a smile, he hugged Faith closer to him out of pure balls and nodded, "Oh, yes, complete contentment here, Lynda." If Faith woke up at that point, she'd probably kill him.  
  
"Same here, Lynda." Or not; Faith's voice was drowsy from her sleep, but it was definitely all there as she sat up, "Thanks, stud."  
  
"No problem, F," he shot back, sitting up as well. Shaking his head to clear the cobwebs, he then yawned, vaguely noticing that Faith had not gotten off of the bed, "Comfortable?"  
  
"Very," she mumbled from beside him, which got a chuckle from Lynda as she left and room.  
  
Seeing as he was still a little low on sleep, he laid right back down, which caused Faith to snuggle into his side, and fell back to sleep quickly.  
  
"Are the children well?"  
  
"Yes, Adam, they are. Why are you here?"  
  
"To talk, mostly – I haven't had much of a chance to catch up with you over the past few years and now that you have your Slayer, I'd like to get in a few conversations before you disappear completely." Adam leaned back into his seat, smiling slightly, "So, how have you been with Alexander here?"  
  
"Well enough – he seems to be genuinely concerned with Faith's well being and where she is concerned, I am willing to give him just enough rope to hang himself with, as the Americans say."  
  
"Do you really think him capable of harming her?"  
  
"No, but I do like to keep all of my bases covered."  
  
Adam chuckled, "How positively American of you, Lynda. So, how is it with having a Slayer to take care of and train?"  
  
Lynda's face split into a smile and her eyes softened a little, "As close to motherhood as I shall probably get, Adam. I've seen her when she's hurt, when she's recovering, and even now when I believe she is denying that she has feelings for someone."  
  
"Alexander, you mean."  
  
She nodded, "Yes, though I believe that they are more Platonic than romantic in nature; he has only ever tried to protect her, which I believe that only I have ever done for her, and she finds that ... difficult to comprehend. She sees the proprietor of the computer store, Diane, as a threat to her claim on Alexander is fiercely protective of him yet I am sure that she does not see it that way."  
  
Adam grinned, "Ah, Slayers in love."  
  
Lynda didn't comment, merely sitting there for a moment before speaking again, "What did you and Alexander speak about this morning after I went back to bed?"  
  
Adam lost his grin and looked decidedly uncomfortable, "He asked me why you seemed to hate me and I answered as honestly as I could; he didn't seem too surprised, really, but rather he seemed ... expectant."  
  
"So he knows about William?"  
  
"To an extent, yes; I told him that he knocked you out and I staked him, then told you about it. All in all, that is more or less what happened."  
  
Lynda frowned, "You mean that you didn't tell him that William was your brother?"  
  
"My brother was dead and that abomination merely looked, sounded and thought like him, Lynda," Adam told her flatly. "I did what I had to do to protect you when you could not protect yourself, end of story."  
  
"I never did thank you for saving my life, did I?"  
  
"No, you didn't, but hen again you didn't have to, Lynda; you were my friend and I did what I had to do to make sure you lived."  
  
"Even at the cost of nearly twenty years of friendship, of being my best friend?"  
  
Adam looked oddly reflective, then grinned sadly, "At what price victory, Lynda. At what price victory."  
  
(AN: ACK! I think my teeth are starting to rot with how sugary this last part was, but don't worry, they'll get back to fighting like an old married couple soon enough.)  
  
He heard a snap and then a whirring sound before it occurred to him where he was; he was still in his, that same warm lump on his chest, the same faint scent of strawberries, only this time there was a heavier scent of spice and something that he couldn't readily identify, but it was close to his nostrils. Faith, apparently, hadn't moved and seemed to be just starting to stir in her sleep as his eyes opened to reveal a grinning Lynda, holding a camera, and a smirking Adam, who appeared to have a camcorder in his hands, "Die horrible deaths, both of you."  
  
Lynda put on a slightly affronted, if innocent, expression, "Why Alexander, did we do something to you?"  
  
He growled slightly, his eyes flashing, "You woke me up from a pleasant nap, Lynda; I've KILLED for lesser crimes than that."  
  
"But we have such good blackmail material now," Adam chipped in from behind the Slayer's Watcher, his camera shot angling down to capture Lynda's backside, it appeared.  
  
"And I'm not the one taking pictures of Lynda's ass, now, am I? How's THAT for blackmail?" He smirked as Lynda spun around and made a grab at the camcorder even as Adam jerked back, out of the room, actually, and Faith began to stir even more.  
  
"Give me that camcorder, Adam," he heard Lynda snarl at Adam, who sounded to be doing his best to Moonwalk down the stairs while dodging a grasping hand.  
  
"What does a girl have to do to get some sleep around here, Xander?" Faith's grumbled question into his chest made him look down and see her sleepy brown eyes and mussed hair, which brought a smile to his face.  
  
"You have to ignore the Watcher's Peanut Gallery," he grinned, even as there was a howl of indignation from the floor below them.  
  
"That was my FOOT!"  
  
"It could have been your HEAD, and I am NOT talking about the one on top of you SHOULDERS."  
  
Xander felt Faith chuckle sleepily on top of his chest before she rolled over and stretched out with a groan; knowing now what he didn't know then, he would have thought her actions as an invitation, but instead he merely at up and reached over, goosing her stomach quickly, which got a squeal and a giggle out of her as she swiped back at him.  
  
"THAT HURT!"  
  
"IT WAS SUPPOSED TO!"  
  
Faith looked over at him, her face split into a grin, "They both REALLY need to get laid, Xand."  
  
He merely nodded as what sounded to be a monumental bar brawl erupted in the kitchen; there were shriek, howls, shouts, the occasional crash and more than a few hurled curses between the two combatants as the two 'children' of the house sat in mute fascination above the ruckus that the two 'adults' were causing below them. Finally, though, he got tired of it and got off of the bed, rummaging through a bag for a second before coming up with a weapon of pure intolerance, a tool of those who wished to aggravate and annoy – a large fog horn.  
  
"That's mean, Xand."  
  
"I am occasionally callus and strange, Faith, but when I need to be I am VERY mean." He gave her an evil grin and made his way out of the room and down the stairs.  
  
Upon reaching the kitchen, though, his definition of evil grew to a new level as he saw Lynda stalking Adam with a skillet in one hand and a barbeque fork in the other; Adam, for his part, had the lid of a large pot in his left hand and was holding a whisk in the other like a mace; it was all he could do to keep from laughing at the absurdity of it all as he positioned the air horn and let fly a mighty blast of compressed air that shook the windows in their settings.  
  
Lynda squawked in surprise and dropped the barbeque fork while slinging the skillet in his general direction; Adam, for his part, dropped both his 'shield' and his 'mace' and covered his ears in agony as Xander found himself ducking out of the way of flying cookware.  
  
Both looked at him indignantly and shouted, in unison, "What was THAT for, Alexander?"  
  
Eyeing where the skillet had left a dent in the wall, he picked himself up from where he had thrown himself to keep from getting hit, he grinned un- remorsefully at the pair and wielded the air horn like a weapon, "Now, CHILDREN, are we going to behave?"  
  
Lynda growled several words under her breath as Adam picked up his whisk again, tossing it to Lynda, and began to advance, neither of them saying anything to him as he began to back up, wondering if he had done the wrong thing in using the air horn to get their attention and break up the fight, "Now, don't be hasty, you two."  
  
"Why Alexander," Lynda purred in a saccharine sweet voice. "Whatever do you mean?"  
  
"Yes, why would we do anything hasty?" Adam stooped to pick up the fallen skillet, and when he came back up he was wearing a grin worthy of Ares himself – purely malevolent and evil.  
  
"Eep!" Was all he was able to get out as they rushed him – the fight for survival was once again on, but this time he couldn't shoot back.  
  
"What happened to you, Harris?" Diane's voice was sympathetic as he walked into 'Whiz Kids' computer store and limped as he did, "You get hit by a truck or something?"  
  
"Or something, Diane." He walked over to where she stood behind the desk, her hair still electric blue, though she was not in leather and a halter top today, but rather a pair of jeans and a t-shirt, "So, how are you?"  
  
"Good; I'm going to be going to California pretty soon to help out my cousin Jenny in Sunnydale for a while, so we'll be seeing more of each other in case..." she left the statement hanging and wore a grin the size of Texas.  
  
"I'll be sure to keep that in mind, Diane, but before pleasure, there must be business – those programs I asked for?"  
  
"Ah, here." She went to rummage around for several minutes as he remembered the translation, Internet searching, and CAD/CAM programs that he had asked for shortly after getting the computer to begin with – they might not be useful just yet, but one could never know the future in it's entirety.  
  
Once the transaction was made, she smiled at him again, "So, what are your plans if you go back to California?"  
  
"Survive high school, mostly, but after that I'm going to try to get into college, or if not, go into the military."  
  
She boldly looked him up and down, "Well, I always did have a thing for men in uniform..."  
  
"Stop trying to get in his pants, Diane." He turned to see Faith walking into the store, a grin on her face as she came up to him and hugged him hugely, "That is to say, unless I can join you."  
  
That caught him off guard enough to allow a blush to spread across his cheeks as the pair began to plot out just what they would do to him once they got him into the same bed together, but thankfully another phone call from Lex saved him, "Go."  
  
"Are you well, Alexander?"  
  
"I think these two are trying to kill me with embarrassment, Lex. What's the problem?"  
  
Lex's grin could be felt from the other end of the phone, "No problems, Alexander, merely a warning that in two weeks you, Faith and Lynda will be on your way back to Sunnydale."  
  
"Well, shit."  
  
"Indeed."  
  
"Problems, Xand?" Faith's voice was full of worry as she walked around to look at him.  
  
"No, my boss just gave me a time frame on how much longer we're going to be Boston."  
  
"Oh." She then slapped his arm, "Don't worry me like that!"  
  
"Abuse," he grumbled, rubbing the offended extremity as Diane began to chuckle. "I thought I told you I wasn't into that kind of stuff."  
  
She blinked and then smiled, "Hey, it can't all be vanilla; you need kinks every now and then."  
  
In the background, Diane sounded as if she was about to die from laughter as he put on an indignant face, "HEY! Vanilla happens to be my favorite flavor, Faith." He then looked thoughtful, "Though what is the old saying ... oh yeah, 'It's only kinky the first few times'. I guess that means we need to get started on the kinky stuff."  
  
Diane howled as Faith blushed, gaping to make a comment as he dropped the money on the counter, grabbed the program CD's and waved goodbye to Diane, "Later, Ladies." It wasn't often that he could make Faith blush, so he took every chance he could get when it presented itself.  
  
"Well, the house is still standing," he mumbled as he walked into the residence, creeping as he did, watching for the demonic duo of Adam and Lynda (absently rubbing the back of his head where she had tagged him with a whisk – if swung hard enough, they really could hurt) as he did, until he reached the kitchen, where he saw both Adam and Lynda sipping quietly on some tea. "Is there a cease fire I need to know about?"  
  
Lynda smiled, "No, Alexander, nothing that you need to worry yourself with; that earlier ... display ... was something of a reunion of an old friendship."  
  
"Friendship?"  
  
"Yeah, well, with friends like hers, I don't need enemies." Adam chuckled and then winced as Lynda kicked him beneath the table, "Sorry about the whisk thing, Alex."  
  
"I should have kept my nose out of it, actually, but I have news; I'm heading back to Sunny D in a few weeks."  
  
"As are we; Mister Travers has informed me that our time here in Boston is done – he does, however, wish to meet with you in hopes that he can persuade you to work for him."  
  
"On a hot day in the coldest regions of Hell; I know him and I don't like him, nor do I trust him any further than I can throw the Queen Mary II." He hopped up on the counter and sighed, "What in the hell am I going to do now?"  
  
"First of all, you can get off of my counter," Lynda told him primly, which he obeyed immediately. "Secondly, you can tell us where you'll be staying once you get back to Sunnydale."  
  
"My place near the University, though I must say now that I have been a bit too free with information in the past, so that's all you get from me for now."  
  
Adam struck a wounded pose, "Don't you trust me?"  
  
"Of course not, Adam, but then again," he smiled and turned, "you should not trust me either."  
  
"I trust nobody but myself, Alex; I realize that it's not anything personal..."  
  
"But it's business, I know." He looked over at Lynda, who had a slightly disturbed look on her face, "Do you trust me, Lynda?"  
  
"With Faith's well-being, yes; I have figured out that you would not compromise that for anything.. I do, however, trust you with my own life, just as I hope you trust me with yours."  
  
"I eat your cooking, don't I?" He grinned to take some of the bite out of the comment, but Adam nearly choked on his tea as Lynda kicked him under the table, "I trust you to do what is necessary and right."  
  
"Good, now go back upstairs and check on your computer." He arched his eyebrow at her and she continued, "I heard it saying 'You've Got Mail' several times in the past few minutes."  
  
"Cool. Play nice, kids." Hustling it upstairs, he ignored her glare and Adam's chuckle and then, once reaching his room, he turned off his Lion King screensaver that showed the three Hyenas and pulled up his e-mail. There were four pieces of mail, three of which were junk, but the last one was from Buffy. Steeling himself, he clicked it open and was surprised that it didn't detonate his computer instantly.  
  
Alexander, there are no real words to say just how much your words in the cemetery hurt me, but then again there are some parts to your speech that rang true enough that I have to admit to them – no, I didn't want to deal with Angelus, because I couldn't see him because of my love of Angel. I'm sorry that I let him out and couldn't deal with the consequences, but nothing I can do can change the fact that it happened.  
  
I'm also sorry about Kendra and that Brittany girl (when did you meet her?) but Kendra was a Slayer, so her days were already numbered. Harsh but true. Why didn't you tell us about why she needed to die? I like to think I would have understood.  
  
Why didn't you tell us about any of it at all to being with? We could have helped you? Did you not trust us? Why did you hide your memories of the Hyena? Why?  
  
Sigh I can't say that we'll ever be friends again, like we were ... but I am willing to at least try to rebuild what we had to a degree. Don't expect me to trust you 100% because you burned me once, bad, and if you do it again, it'll be my own damned fault. Maybe, and this is a big maybe, we can get along well enough together to at least not hurl insults at fifty paces.  
  
Now, to the important stuff – do I become prom queen? I mean, you ARE from the future, right? Anyway, what's in fashion? Who is with who? Do we save the world? Do I graduate? Does Dawn finally go away and stop being a pest? TELL ME! BAS.  
  
He couldn't help but smile at the last portion of her e-mail – apparently nothing had really changed as far as timelines went. He was also partially relieved that she had gotten over anything resembling homicidal in nature and had, apparently, thought about extending an olive branch.  
  
First of all, let me say that I'm glad your e-mail didn't detonate my new computer (it was kinda expensive) and I didn't tell you anything because a) it was classified out the yang by my boss, and b)I'm not sure how you would have handled the truth of the fact of what you had done in the previous time line. For future reference I will not tell you or anyone what is to come – what you don't know, you can't tell if tortured or you can't screw up / with.  
  
I kept my Hyena memories from you for a damned good reason – I wanted to forget the incident ever happened, yet seeing what I had done to you it seemed pertinent for me to give you some ammo against me to use at some point in time. I'm not proud of what it did to you or the others while in charge, but those are memories that I will have to deal with eventually – oh, and tell Willow that if she tries any memory mojo on me, I will be VERY cross with her (I know you think that she isn't capable of anything like that, but I've learned to never discount what a little power can do to someone – take me for example).  
  
As for us possibly being friends again, I'm not sure how to go about that – here in Boston I have, or like to think I have, become friends with Kendra's replacement, Faith, and while you and she might or might not get along, let me tell you that she and I are easier friends at worst then you and I were ever at best. She and I ... click ... if that's the term I want to use, but not in an expectant way that I once hoped you and I would be (that ship sailed a while back). Oh, FYI, we won't hurl insults at fifty paces – I prefer to shoot at that distance (and before we get too much further, yes, bullets DO kill vampires, and NO, I am NOT going to stop using them – deal with it).  
  
Now, for your 'important' stuff – well, I'm not telling you anything more than little Dawnie is more of fixture in your life and is not a pest of any kind. I have, however, gotten her something that should keep Mr. Gordo in your room, not hers. Don't think too much about the animal I picked – it's from her favorite movie. ALH.  
  
Hitting the send button, he leaned back in his chair and thought ahead to the near and not-so-near future, wondering what it held even as he smelled Faith entering his room. With a grin, he stood, turned and smiled even as she walked forwards and hugged him – they might or might not get together in the future, but friends needed very little reason to hug.  
  
"So, two weeks?"  
  
"Two weeks, Faith, then you get to meet the rest of the gang ... for better or worse."  
  
AN1: I know the ending is somewhat sappy, but I needed to finish and this was just calling out for some odd reason. Don't worry, I'll try and do better in the neat future. AR.  
  
AN2: Okay, that's it for Setting Things Right Ch. 7, not to mention this series of stories. There will be a sequel to this, but it will be a while off as I need to finish up some of my other WIP's, so now for that poll.  
  
Which WIP should I finish first:  
  
-With The Will And A Word  
  
-Without Mercy Or Remorse  
  
-From Darkness To Light  
  
-The Assassin And The Sorceress  
  
Thanks for your input, AR. 


End file.
